Google to shut down spam backdoor for political campaigns

Google plans to end a controversial pilot program that allows political groups to bypass Gmail’s spam filters later this month, as first reported by The Washington Post Tuesday.

Google launched the program last September in response to Republican accusations that the company’s algorithms disproportionately flag conservative fundraising emails as spam. The program allowed candidates, political party committees, and leadership political action committees to sign up with Google to make their messages exempt from the company’s spam detection systems.

“We will keep investing in spam-filtering technologies that protect people from unwanted messages while still allowing senders to reach the inboxes of users who want to see those messages,”...

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