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The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission warned Google that he may make a federal case out of how Gmail’s spam filters treat fundraising messages for Republican candidates.
Andrew N. Ferguson, named by President Trump in January to lead the government’s primary consumer-protection office, announced Thursday that he had sent a two-page letter (PDF) to Google CEO Sundar Pichai advising that Gmail’s spam filters could qualify as “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”
“My understanding from recent reporting is that Gmail’s spam filters routinely block messages from reaching consumers when those messages come from Republican senders but fail to block similar messages sent by Democrats,” Ferguson wrote.
He cited an Aug. 13 story in the New York Post that reported on research by the Republican consulting firm Targeted Victory that found Gmail flagged test messages with links to the GOP fundraising platform WinRed as spam but left alone otherwise identical messages that instead linked to the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue.
Targeted Victory, which previously surfaced in tech-policy news in 2022 when the Washington Post reported that Meta paid that firm to stage a campaign to boost concerns about TikTok, later shared these findings in a thread on X.
Ferguson suggested that Google’s conduct could violate the prohibition on “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” in the Federal Trade Commission Act, the cornerstone of the commission’s enforcement authority.
“If Gmail’s filters keep Americans from receiving speech they expect, or donating as they see fit, the filters may harm American consumers and may violate the FTC Act’s prohibition of unfair or deceptive trade practices,” he wrote. “Any act or practice inconsistent with these obligations could lead to an FTC investigation and potential enforcement action.”
This isn’t Ferguson’s first critique of large tech companies; in February, he opened an investigation into what he called “tech censorship.” And two weeks ago, he sent a letter to more than 12 tech firms “reminding them of their obligations to protect the privacy and data security of American consumers despite pressure from foreign governments.”
Google contests Ferguson’s implication that it’s suppressing political advocacy.
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“Gmail’s spam filters look at a variety of objective signals – like whether people mark a particular email as spam, or if a particular ad agency is sending a high volume of emails that are often marked by people as spam,” Ross Richendrfer, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email Saturday. “This applies equally to all senders, regardless of political ideology. We will review this letter and look forward to engaging constructively.”
We’ve Been Here Before
This is not a new allegation. Back in early 2016, the email-analytics firm ReturnPath found that Trump campaign messages got classified as spam more often than those from the campaigns for Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), although its analysis also pointed to some shortfalls in the Trump campaign’s mail practices.
In 2022, Google created a free pilot program, with the approval of the Federal Election Commission, for campaigns from both parties that allowed their messages to bypass its spam filters.
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A year later, the FEC rejected a Republican complaint that Gmail’s spam filters represented an in-kind donation to Democratic candidates, writing in an analysis (PDF) that “Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution.”
And in 2024, a federal judge ruled against a similar lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee, finding that the evidence presented by the RNC did not add up to a violation of any law. In his 27-page opinion (PDF), however, Judge Daniel J. Calabretta did allow that while Google’s actions were inconsequential, they might have been underhanded: “Perhaps the strongest allegation that Google acted without good faith is that the RNC’s emails were not relegated to spam after the RNC filed this lawsuit.”
One bit of context to keep in mind with this story is that spam filtering is both extraordinarily tricky and requires frequent tinkering and therefore often gets things wrong. A check of the spam folder in my own Gmail account Saturday morning revealed that it had wrongly detained fundraising emails from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and from the Virginia gubernatorial campaign of former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger.
Another is the broader conduct of the Trump administration, given that Trump declared in February that he will supervise and control independent agencies like the FTC (shortly before he attempted to fire two Democratic members of the FTC in disregard of the law).
This administration has repeatedly shown itself willing to punish businesses, organizations, and individuals for suspected favoritism toward Democratic candidates. See, for example, Trump yanking the security clearances of former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs for his defense of the 2020 election as securely run. Or consider the Federal Communications Commission investigating CBS for allegedly deceptive editing of a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris–followed by the FCC conditioning its approval of CBS parent Paramount’s merger with Skydance on installing a “bias monitor” at the network.
But if a business does a favor for Trump, doors will open for it at the White House and elsewhere. Elon Musk seized the @america handle on X to promote Trump’s 2024 campaign while spending at least $250 million to support his candidacy and found himself rewarded with unprecedented power in this administration.
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