A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which is the main, national arm of the party, that challenged the approach taken by Google to filtering which emails get relegated to Gmail users’ spam folders and which, well, don’t.
Characteristically, Republicans claimed the rates at which their outreach messages ended up in spam folders to represent political bias and targeting from Google. In fact, the company provided Republicans with insights on improving the performance of their email campaigns, and substantive evidence for bias underpinning the originally poor outcomes just isn’t there. Republicans tried to cite a study from a North Carolina State University team ostensibly in support of their conclusions, but those actually behind that effort actually made no conclusion of bad faith — meaning something intentionally or effectively destructive uniquely towards the Republican Party.
The judge also rebuffed arguments from the Republican committee about the supposed interest from their target audiences in, in fact, receiving their messages, noting that past expressions of support for the Republican cause don’t necessarily equate to agreement to receive all the messages that the Republican National Committee or its affiliates may eventually send. The judge, Daniel Calabretta, noted that “just because a user interacts with a company at one point in time does not mean that the user ‘solicits’ each and every email sent by the entity.” Republicans, led by committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, intend to refile their challenge.
The underlying arguments mirror baseless contentions that have repeatedly emerged in Republican circles, alleging that there is some demonstrable conspiracy at tech companies that threatens the spread of conservative views. There is no real-world evidence of some such plot, and in fact, conservative content often does well in online environments. Other specific claims have ostensibly implicated these tech companies in effectively working on behalf of Democrats’ political ambitions. Trump tied restrictions placed by social media firms on the past spread of reporting related to Hunter Biden to corrupt government action, though no such connection existed.
