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Politics

Gmail Launches Pilot To Keep Campaign Emails Out of Spam (axios.com) 138

Posted by msmash from the watch-out dept.
Google is launching a pilot program to keep emails from political campaigns from going to users' spam folders this week, the company told Axios. From the report: Google asked the Federal Election Commission in June if a program that would let campaigns emails bypass spam filters, instead giving users the option to move them to spam first, would be legal under campaign finance laws. Despite hundreds of negative comments submitted to the FEC arguing against it, the FEC approved the program in August. Eligible committees, abiding by security requirements and best practices as outlined by Google, can now register to participate.

Google has come under fire that its algorithms unfairly target conservative content across its services, and that its Gmail service filters more Republican fundraising and campaign emails to spam. This is partly based on a study from North Carolina State University, though its authors say it has been misconstrued. "We expect to begin the pilot with a small number of campaigns from both parties and will test whether these changes improve the user experience, and provide more certainty for senders during this election period," Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesperson, told Axios. "We will continue to listen and respond to feedback as the pilot progresses." He added: "During the pilot, users will be in control through a more prominent unsubscribe button."
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Gmail Launches Pilot To Keep Campaign Emails Out of Spam More

Gmail Launches Pilot To Keep Campaign Emails Out of Spam

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  • this is an PAID EMAIL from TRUMP for 2024
    Don't forget to vote trump.

    No I don't want any of this shit.

    • Re:this is an PAID EMAIL from TRUMP for 2024 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Monday September 19, 2022 @05:12PM (#62896227)

      this is an PAID EMAIL from TRUMP for 2024 Don't forget to vote trump.

      No I don't want any of this shit.

      Don't worry. From what I hear, Donald Trump would never PAY for such a thing.

      • But he's not above letting others pay for these things on his behalf. Send donations now so that he can continue asking for donations!

    • What will they do with the political emails I have specifically filtered directly to the trash?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      And others won't like email from Biden. I'm sure they've already thought of that with their pilots, but I'm not sure about their decision to use pilots. They're a lot better at flying planes.

    • Use Thunderbird as mail client. It has a logic that can learn what's spam or not that works ok.

  • It is SPAM (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Monday September 19, 2022 @05:06PM (#62896203) Homepage Journal
    I get signed up for this stuff occasionally. From people I generally support. But it really is spam at a level that corporate knows would cost them customers.

    But politicians want money and so they send out these ridiculous emails and texts. Several time a day. Begging for money. Google is MS 25 years ago. Very badly behaved and under investigation. So they need give the politicians what they want. Spam that users cannot ignore.

    • Spam that users cannot ignore.

      RTFA. You can turn on filtering for political spam by clicking one checkbox.

      I am feeling a distinct lack of outrage about this.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by taustin ( 171655 )

        I am feeling a distinct lack of outrage about this.

        Yeah, so am I, but opt-out spam is, in fact, spam.

        The good news is, if they can reliably identify political spam well enough to bypass spam filters, they can reliably filter it out if we can opt out. If they actually live up to their promises. (And we know how well Google does that.)

      • Spam that users cannot ignore.

        RTFA. You can turn on filtering for political spam by clicking one checkbox.

        I am feeling a distinct lack of outrage about this.

        Ya, but will that banner/button show up for people who use IMAP/POP with, say, Thunderbird? If so, then they're mucking with the content of mail being sent to people. If not, then people have to fuck around with Gmail in the browser. From TFA:

        Users will see a banner on the first email from participants in the program, asking if they want to keep seeing the messages, unsubscribe or report as spam.

        • You can teach Thunderbird to mark it as spam.

          • You can teach Thunderbird to mark it as spam.

            Sure, but since I didn't ask for those types of email, they're spam and the shouldn't get that far.

            Since Google *clearly* has the ability to filter political email now, they should provide a server-side setting to allow users to specifically enable it, but they won't because everyone would enable it and senders wouldn't participate in whatever scam Google is cooking up.

      • Time for the EU to fine them again then , I shouldn't even need to opt out to avoid their spam.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Gonoff ( 88518 )

          Such spam should be targeted at US "citizens". Very few of the rest of us should be targeted.

          The question really is, "How can they tell?"

    • Agreed on it being SPAM. And if their filter stops working then their email product becomes replaceable. It's time to teach them some economics.

      I never sign up for any of these emails. And my mother donates a small amount to DNC and somehow they mistook my email address for hers. Then they decided to SPAM me for people in far away states.

  • It IS spam! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Striek ( 1811980 ) on Monday September 19, 2022 @05:07PM (#62896205)

    This is asinine. Political campaign emails are almost always "unsolicited bulk email" - the very definition of spam.

    Just stop. Spam filters exist for a reason. Unwanted emails from political candidates is one of them.

    And besides, who decides what is a "political campaign", and what is not? I don't need Google finding yet another way to be the arbiter of truth, thank you very much.

    • One man's Spam(tm) is another man's canned spiced ham-like substance.

    • Political campaign emails are almost always "unsolicited bulk email" - the very definition of spam.

      The difference is that regular spam tries to sell you fake stuff, include trojan attachments. They play no useful role in society, they mostly are electronic fraud. They also try to be difficult to filter manually. Political emails, despite unsolicited, play a legitimate role in society in promoting exchange of ideas and participation. They are also easy to filter out using keywords. Classifying political emails together with "Order V1agra" spam would be an action against the foundations of democracy.

      What w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ksheff ( 2406 )
        But the "Order V1agra" spam would be considered useful compared to the trash that is being sent out by the campaigns that are being filtered.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by taustin ( 171655 )

        Political emails, despite unsolicited, play a legitimate role in society in promoting exchange of ideas and participation.

        That's got to be the more naive thing bit of full in this entire discussion. That is, literally, the exact opposite of the purpose, and effect, of political spam. It is intended to raise money from people who already agree with the candidate (or believe they do, at any rate), and reinforce those beliefs by making the recipient more resistant to any conflicting view.

        The exact opposite of what political spam does.

      • Re:It IS spam! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Monday September 19, 2022 @06:34PM (#62896493)

        Let me guess. You're a politician yourself.

        Political emails may play a "legitimate" role but it should be down to an individual to decide if they want to receive it or not. Otherwise, it's just unsolicited which makes it, well, SPAM.

        • Political emails may play a "legitimate" role but it should be down to an individual to decide if they want to receive it or not.

          Agreed, but how is an email provider going to guess which party emails you have subscribed to?

          Let me guess. You're a politician yourself.

          Engineer here. But I am not from USA, maybe you have a bigger spam problem than I have.

          • The email provider should have an opt-in setting on the account level.
            > Yes, I want to subscribe to the new political campaing exclusion model.
            > No, I don't want this crap. Filter everything just like you did before.

            A political engineer then. ;-)

      • The chance that "Order V1agra" is selling a working product is greater than the chance that a political email is being truthful.

      • Bullshit. If they're unsolicited, they're still spam, still garbage, still sent by garbage people, and still 100% illegitimate.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Alumoi ( 1321661 )

        Political emails play no useful role in society, they are electronic fraud, like all politicians.Classifying political emails together with "Order V1agra" spam would be an action for the foundations of democracy.

        What would be helpful is automatically populated Liars folder or tag so you can easily have a good laugh without mixing them with the legitimate spam.

        There, much better.

        • The argument "all politicians bad" is 1) one justification that single-party proponents have used in countries with single-party rule and 2) a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it entices the bad people to grab their opportunity and good people to avoid politics. This makes me very worried for the state of democracy in USA. When a large portion of society shares this opinion, the last nail on the coffin is electing someone who thinks like that, abolishing parties and becoming dictator-for-life.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by GlennC ( 96879 )

            This makes me very worried for the state of democracy in USA.

            You shouldn't be worried about the state of democracy in the US.

            It's already dead, and has been for decades.

            The only question now is whether the dictatorship will be a theocracy or not.

    • In the USA, campaign emails are explicitly excepted from the legal definition of spam, as defined in the CAN-SPAM act. Yes, that is the actual name. Obviously it means that the congresscreeps that passed the piece of shit CAN-SPAM you.

  • Bias? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GotNoRice ( 7207988 ) on Monday September 19, 2022 @05:08PM (#62896219)
    Are all political emails going to stay out of spam, or only those who align with the political views of Google employees?
    • It does not matter: if the problem is that some political emails are not going to spam the correct solution is to fix the filter so that all of them go to spam, not to block the spam filter entirely. If the can identify the emails to let them avoid the filter then it's simple to use the same identification to block them.

    • "Eligible committees, abiding by security requirements and best practices as outlined by Google, can now register to participate."

      Meaning they're not trying to read content to decide this (which could be subjective in some ways).

      I mean it's possible they could try to only allow certain people, but I doubt it. Sure they might remove future access if a message breaks some limit, like suggesting violence. And I'm sure someone will claim they're being censored when they fail to setup the feature correctly (PE

  • Fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Monday September 19, 2022 @05:08PM (#62896221)

    The only political emails I receive are from American politicians and "special interest groups".

    I haven't yet succeeded in being unsubscribed from these emails - the unsubscribe link works, but I still get the emails.

    I am not American, I am not eligible to vote in America, and I have no interest in the whining of American politicians about how much money they need to defeat their evil opponent, but I cant stop the emails coming - it quite literally is spam, and here we have Google saying that I cant rely on my spam filter any more.

    So, fuck you Google for putting this in place. You are part of the problem. Time to move my last bits off of Gmail.

    • Re:Fuck off (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Monday September 19, 2022 @05:25PM (#62896267)

      The "unsubscribe" links are there to verify that they reached a valid email. Thus they will put your name on a list to sell to others, even if they do unsubscribe you when they feel like it. My gut feeling is that it's safest to just ignore them all rather than try to unsubscribe. Spammers are just like advertisers, in that they have no moral qualms; they would tattoo ads on your grandmother if they could find her.

      • You would hope that official campaigns wouldnt do that sort of thing, or that it wouldnt be legal for them to do that sort of thing - I dont click unsubscribe on anything that looks remotely dodgy, but if its an official campaign email then theoretically it should be safe.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          You would hope that official campaigns wouldnt do that sort of thing, or that it wouldnt be legal for them to do that sort of thing

          Only if you were born yesterday.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          FYI I never contributed to Trump's campaign, AND yet they e-mail me. I have clicked the "Unsubscribe" link on their mailings many times, and they continue to send me new e-mails. I have stopped bothering with the Unsubscribe links from their mailing lists which apparently are expanding every other month, and just hit Report Spam immediately now.

          • I get ten times the amount of spam from GOP, email and snail mail, than Democrats. Not counting local election where you're flooded with everything. Of the democratic email I think most of it is due to someone else with a similar email to mine because they keep using the wrong name and with ads and campaigns for a place 3 states away. But the rest of the political email and snail mail I think is because my mom signed me up to stuff, or else they're all deliberately lying when they say "here's the info yo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsepeta ( 412566 )

      The American Red Cross continues to email me, even though I've attempted to remove myself from their list.

  • I question whether Google intentionally blocked some emails or whether there was a concerted effort to report certain mailings or senders as spam. My guess is the latter.

    • And by "concerted effort" we're talking about, I didn't ask for this email, so I click "spam" because it is unsolicited bulk mail.

  • So ... (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    ... straight to /dev/null

  • Google, please feel free to hist the "prominent unsubscribe button" for me now. I can tell you for certain that I do not need to wait to see that spam in my inbox before wanting to toss it out...

    While you're at it, could you also take care of those one-line text emails w/ embedded pics for all kinds of things from fake contests through penis enlargement pills... No matter how many times I tell you that crap is spam, you seem to only consider whether I thought the actual product was the spam, not the actual

  • Only if I ALSO get the option to move them ALL to spam.

    If google is intentionally allowing "unsolicited paid advertisements" (the literal definition of spam) into my inbox and I don't have the option to opt-out of that spam, then maybe there's a bigger problem here.

    Campaign finance "law" might be part of the problem too. Just sayin.

  • Because the conservatives ARE spamming (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Monday September 19, 2022 @06:31PM (#62896481)

    Gmail service filters more Republican fundraising and campaign emails to spam.

    Many years ago I made the mistake of contributing to a republican campaign. In the past i've contributed to both republican and democrat campaigns.

    I unsubscribed from their mailings. I get nothing from the democrat campaigns, But the Republicans are still spamming me despite "Unsubscribing" half a dozen times they continue to spam.

    If I Report their fundraising attempts I continue to get as spam that's because IT IS SPAM, and emails like this are MOST ALWAYS UNWANTED. The democrat campaign groups are Not spamming me, Only the Republican ones are, Therefore... IT is 100% Fair that the republicans are being marked as spam more.

    • I unsubscribed from their mailings. I get nothing from the Democrat campaigns, But the Republicans are still spamming me despite "Unsubscribing" half a dozen times they continue to spam.

      And, if people don't respect your Inbox, how likely are they to respect you?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        And, if people don't respect your Inbox, how likely are they to respect you?

        Well, I assume it's negligence on the candidates part. The HTML emails look like Internet Infomercial mails cobbled together on short notice by a 5th Grader trying to sell the latest "Make money scheme" or Magical pills that are scientifically proven to solve all health problems. - Clearly they entrust the operation of their campaigns to an organization who ends up just pick up the book from internet spammers while the Cand

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mitreya ( 579078 )

      The democrat campaign groups are Not spamming me

      You are lucky. The way I have seen Democrat campaigns work is that they will honor an unsubscribe request but will sell your email to several other Democrat campaigns. Yet, I don't think they are breaking any laws, because there is no button "Unsubscribe and don't share my email either". So I am guaranteed to receive various campaign requests in perpetuity.

  • "We expect to begin the pilot with a small number of campaigns from both parties and will test whether these changes improve the user experience, and provide more certainty for senders during this election period," ...

    For "improve user experience" do they mean for the senders of this political spam or the recipients, 'cause if it's the latter I can't make a prediction right now and it's not good for the senders. Also, if I didn't ask for, or previously agree to, email from someone, then it's spam and I don't care about providing "more certainty for senders", unless it's certainty that I won't receive their spam.

  • The reality is that a small proportion of spam emails achieve their target, so it makes sense for our lords and masters in the elite to go on doing it. There's no obvious answer to this problem,

  • EASY FIX (Score:3)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Monday September 19, 2022 @08:06PM (#62896697) Homepage Journal

    Make this hurt them: Forward every single political SPAM you get directly to Sundar Pichai.

  • Since Google *clearly* has the ability to filter political spam -- I mean, unsolicited political emails -- now, I suggest they provide a server-side setting to allow users to specifically enable this. Obviously, they won't because (basically) everyone would enable it and senders wouldn't register/participate and whatever scam Google is cooking up won't work like they want it to.

    On the other hand, if this is about people not receiving political email that they consented / signed up to get, then that's an

    • They do respect your unsubscribe request, first they sell your email address to any one who wants to buy it, then they donate the list to whatever the pac is going to be called on the next issue. Finally they sell your address to a known 'suckers' list.
  • When you can't even create a new email account anywhere and never send anything from it or give it out to anyone for any reason and it STILL gets filled to the brim with SPAM then there's something fundamentally wrong that needs to be addressed!
  • I don't see any way a user can distinguish between a "legitimate" (if there is such a thing) political add from spam, from a dangerous email. Also, even if it is "legitimate" political email, it may not be from the candidate it claims to be from, but is a false flag operation. "When I become president, I will replace money with NFTs".

    Best practice is to not open any political email. If you want to know what positions a candidate claims they will take, then go to their campaign site.

  • Users will see a banner on the first email from participants in the program, asking if they want to keep seeing the messages, unsubscribe or report as spam.

    This pilot program "unsubscribe" option must never go away. More importantly, the banner should give users the option to unsubscribe from all political ads, not just those coming from a particular political participant. Otherwise each party will just generate dozens of participants separately registered with Google and you'll have to opt out of each one, getting spammed in the process. I can't see any argument against a global unsubscribe option, unless you're a political campaigner. At worst, make peop

  • if a program that would let campaigns emails bypass spam filters

    I hate politicians with the fire of a thousand suns. I really do. I donty want fscking spam. I've spent half my life defending small business and community group IT systems on savagely restrained budgets from this curse.

    So Google DELIBERATELY nerfing them to appease the mewling cries of the political class does nothing exccept remind us that we mere mortals do NOT have the power.

    What Google SHOULD be doing is saying "Shut the fuck up. unsolicit

  • I live in Europe but my Gmail address is blindly given out by people who live in the USA as if it is their own. Most of the time I tag it as spam and move on.

    My fear with Google's approach is that I will now get political spam that they've signed up for (which is of no relevance to me) and there is no way for me to mark it as spam.

  • Slimy Politicians Asking for Money

  • I never opted in.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsepeta ( 412566 )

      What I want is a way for spammers to PAY ME TO MESSAGE ME, then a filter to send those messages to the trash.

  • ... from normal mailservers without HTML or other typical signs of spam. Those E-Mails tend to land in "Spam" by default.

  • ...And I'm launching a filter to ensure that every single one goes directly into my spam-that-will-automatically-be-deleted-in-2-days folder.

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