Following up on a report from earlier this month that Google was caught once again deep-sixing fundraising emails from Republicans, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission has warned the company to cease and desist. Axios reports:
The FTC isn’t announcing a new investigation into Google, but FTC chair Andrew Ferguson is putting CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured above) on notice that he is taking allegations from Republicans about suppressing emails seriously.
In May, congressional Republicans called on the FTC to investigate whether some of their emails are unfairly ending up in spam folders.
Google insists that its spam filters are not politically biased.
What they are saying: “I write due to recent reporting that suggests Alphabet‘s administration of Gmail is designed to have partisan effects, and accordingly to notify you that Alphabet may be engaging in unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” Ferguson said in his letter, which was obtained by Axios.
“I write to inform you of your obligations under the FTC Act,” he said. “Any act or practice inconsistent with these obligations could lead to an FTC investigation and potential enforcement action.”
As we reminded in a post here two weeks ago, NLPC presented a shareholder proposal at Alphabet (Google’s parent company) that called for the company to report on “the vulnerabilities of its enforcement of Google’s and YouTube’s Terms of Service related to content policies, and assessing the risks posed by content management controversies related to issues such as election interference, freedom of expression, and inequitable application of policies, and how they affect the Company’s finances, operations, and reputation.”
One example our proposal highlighted was evidence of the following:
The Republican National Committee claimed that Gmail sent more than 22 million of its emails to spam during a critical fundraising period in the 2022 election cycle. The Company has incurred a lawsuit and a complaint to the Federal Elections Commission due to the alleged suppression.
NLPC’s Paul Chesser presented the proposal at Alphabet’s annual meeting in June 2023, and called out the company over its denials that it discriminates based on political viewpoints, when the evidence weighed heavily against Google — and apparently still does.
