Rubio Accuses Google of Directly Influencing Elections, Censoring Majority of Emails to His Supporters
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida says Google is putting its weight against him in the 2022 midterms.
In a Twitter post Saturday, Rubio charged that his campaign’s emails are being blocked from reaching those who want to receive them.
While the Democratic field in the Florida Senate primary includes eight contenders, Rubio appeared to highlight the campaign of Florida Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who is seeking the nomination to challenge him.
“Marco Rubio for Senate is in @Google purgatory Since a Pelosi puppet announced she was running against me they have sent 66% of my emails to REGISTERED SUPPORTERS with @gmail to spam And during the final weeks of finance quarters it climbs to over 90%,” he tweeted.
Marco Rubio for Senate is in @Google purgatory
Since a Pelosi puppet announced she was running against me they have sent 66% of my emails to REGISTERED SUPPORTERS with @gmail to spam
And during the final weeks of finance quarters it climbs to over 90%
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 21, 2022
Rubio did not provide documentation, but his allegation is in line with a recent report from North Carolina State University’s Department of Computer Science, according to Fox News.
The study examined how major email providers treated political communication during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Google emerged as a very different animal from Yahoo and Outlook, the study said.
“Yahoo retained about half of all the political emails in inbox (up to 55.2% marked as spam) while Outlook filtered out the vast majority of emails (over 71.8%) from all political candidates and marked them as spam,” the study said.
“Gmail, however, retained the majority of left-wing candidate emails in inbox (< 10.12% marked as spam) while sent the majority of right-wing candidate emails to the spam folder (up to 77.2% marked as spam),” the study said.
“Central to successful political campaigns is a candidate’s ability to convey their ideas to the public… By making it more difficult for right-of-center candidates to convey their message to voters, Gmail’s political bias dramatically hurt Republican…” https://t.co/oqq5hyF2KJ
— John Hall (@johnkhall) May 19, 2022
The study said the “percentage of emails marked by Gmail as spam from the right-wing candidates grew steadily as the election date approached while the percentage of emails marked as spam from the left-wing candidates remained about the same” as the election neared.
“We further observe that Gmail marks a significantly higher percentage (67.6%) of emails from the right as spam compared to the emails from left (just 8.2%)” the study reported. “Gmail marked 59.3% more emails from the right candidates as spam compared to the left candidates.”
Google maintains it has done nothing wrong.
“Political affiliation has absolutely no bearing on mail classifications in Gmail and we’ve debunked this suggestion, which has surfaced periodically from across the political spectrum, for many years. Mail classifications in Gmail automatically adjust to match Gmail users’ preferences and actions. Gmail users can move messages to spam, or to any other category. Gmail automatically adjusts the classifications of particular emails according to these user actions,” a Google spokesman said.
The nonstop censorship regime from @Google @gmail towards conservatives is obvious. 7 TIMES more likely for conservative emails to end up in spam compared to Dem emails. The bias is real and it must end. Great take from @SteveDaines. https://t.co/bBwL76RQTi
— Josh Arnold (@JoshDavidArnold) May 19, 2022
Several Republican senators last week invited Google officials to lunch to discuss the report’s findings.
One of the participants, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, was clearly not satisfied with Google’s answers, according to Politico.
“The lunch was spirited,” Cruz told Politico.
“Google deflected, refused to provide any data, repeatedly refused to answer direct questions,” he said.
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