Gmail gets approval to move forward with plan to ruin its spam filter(androidpolice.com)
androidpolice.com
Gmail gets approval to move forward with plan to ruin its spam filter
https://www.androidpolice.com/gmail-political-spam/
11 comments
“Our observations in §4.1 to answer Q1 revealed that all SFAs exhibited political biases in the months leading upto the 2020 US elections. Gmail leaned towards the left (Democrats) whereas Outlook and Yahoo leaned towards the right (Republicans). Gmail marked 59.3% more emails from the right candidates as spam com- pared to the left candidates, whereas Outlook and Yahoo marked 20.4% and 14.2% more emails from left candidates as spam com- pared to the right candidates, respectively.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.16743.pdf
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.16743.pdf
What's the source on Google proposing it to the FEC? As far as I've read, FEC wrote it in a way that all large email providers have to follow, Google just happens to be one. Have I missed something?
Request: https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/aos/2022-14/202214R_1.pdf
Google was like "Hey, FEC, we're planning to do this thing; is it illegal? Our lawyers want to know if this counts as a campaign contribution before we start doing it and accidentally break the law". The FEC considered it and replied with a public letter stating that, in their opinion, this isn't a crime.
Final AO: https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/aos/2022-14/2022-14.pdf
Any other email provider could do the same now of course: it's just an opinion about the law, not a rule specific to Google.
Google also could have gone ahead and just done it, of course, but having the AO in hand puts the lawyers at ease.
Google was like "Hey, FEC, we're planning to do this thing; is it illegal? Our lawyers want to know if this counts as a campaign contribution before we start doing it and accidentally break the law". The FEC considered it and replied with a public letter stating that, in their opinion, this isn't a crime.
Final AO: https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/aos/2022-14/2022-14.pdf
Any other email provider could do the same now of course: it's just an opinion about the law, not a rule specific to Google.
Google also could have gone ahead and just done it, of course, but having the AO in hand puts the lawyers at ease.
Thanks! It seems to be a bit of a telephone game between the question, reply and this article. No?
I read it as Google wanting political parties to explicitly register themselves and to use proper email authentication. Then if they start enforcing it, they can't be blamed being biased (again!).
It's not that they are asking if they may let political spam trough, they want accountability from senders and freedom to mark it as spam based on "user consent". Maybe I'm looking at this too positively but to me it sounds very convenient to Google's spam filters.
I read it as Google wanting political parties to explicitly register themselves and to use proper email authentication. Then if they start enforcing it, they can't be blamed being biased (again!).
It's not that they are asking if they may let political spam trough, they want accountability from senders and freedom to mark it as spam based on "user consent". Maybe I'm looking at this too positively but to me it sounds very convenient to Google's spam filters.
My gmail account is very old (got it quite early in the beta phase). Recently it gets flooded with very easy to filter spam: no text, only an image from a randomly generated one-time email address. If they can't filter such an easy class then don't hold out much hope for the future.
FEC's draft advisory opinion:
https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/aos/2022-14/202214.pdf
https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/aos/2022-14/202214.pdf
The email spam filter I want:
if sender not in contacts: delete(message)
if sender not in contacts: delete(message)
I dont mind.
I dont mind that opening email on my top of the line laptop is 5 second process just to view the list of emails, and another 5 seconds for anything on the page to become responsive to clicks.
I dont mind that when email notification shows on my phone, I cant make one of the buttons in notification "mark as read", and have to go trough loops of setting up a google script running every minute that scans my email, and moves all unopened archived emails to Inbox while marking them as read, so avaiable "Archive" button can work as "Mark as read".
I dont mind I have to look where they moved "new email" button this time.
I dont mind that I will now start getting spam emails I cant filter.
I dont mind... Ill be using different email provider soon, and the above are main reasons why.
I wonder if Google is now wilfully on the path to kill the email. It must cost them much, and probably doesnt bring much options of direct monetization, so screw it, eh?
I dont mind that opening email on my top of the line laptop is 5 second process just to view the list of emails, and another 5 seconds for anything on the page to become responsive to clicks.
I dont mind that when email notification shows on my phone, I cant make one of the buttons in notification "mark as read", and have to go trough loops of setting up a google script running every minute that scans my email, and moves all unopened archived emails to Inbox while marking them as read, so avaiable "Archive" button can work as "Mark as read".
I dont mind I have to look where they moved "new email" button this time.
I dont mind that I will now start getting spam emails I cant filter.
I dont mind... Ill be using different email provider soon, and the above are main reasons why.
I wonder if Google is now wilfully on the path to kill the email. It must cost them much, and probably doesnt bring much options of direct monetization, so screw it, eh?
>I wonder if Google is now wilfully on the path to kill the $product. It must cost them much, and probably doesnt bring much options of direct monetization, so screw it, eh?
Their search, both on YouTube and Google.com is getting worse by the day. Their spam filter on Gmail is garbage (I'm getting your "bill is due" fake emails and spam with eggplants emojis right on my inbox).
Their search, both on YouTube and Google.com is getting worse by the day. Their spam filter on Gmail is garbage (I'm getting your "bill is due" fake emails and spam with eggplants emojis right on my inbox).
Google engineers can’t even figure out that email composed by Google, sent by Google, and specifically signed up for by the user is not spam…
Worse, they have designed a system where their own email not just marked as spam, but as phishing.
Repeatedly. Multiple instances per week. Ongoing for years.
I guess they can make it worse, but they don’t seem to have the talent onboard to make it better.
Imagine the level of hubris needed to be as arrogant as they are, and yet so incompetent.
Worse, they have designed a system where their own email not just marked as spam, but as phishing.
Repeatedly. Multiple instances per week. Ongoing for years.
I guess they can make it worse, but they don’t seem to have the talent onboard to make it better.
Imagine the level of hubris needed to be as arrogant as they are, and yet so incompetent.
Another question just started rattling around in my head. How do the senders determine the valid and verified email addresses of US citizens? Are they buying lists or are people knowingly opting into this system? Or are they just pulling in email addresses from disparate government databases? Are they using data in ID.me? [1]
Also, is this assured to be a bi-directional communication or is this just a broadcast to the citizens? If I reply will it be to a "noreply@" address? Will these politicians enter into a forum and be open to unscripted and uncensored real time conversations? If it's a broadcast then could it not just be a Twitter feed that optionally links to a vlog post? If this must be targeted to individuals, then is this by chance a reaction to incidents like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal? [2]
My personal preference would be that politicians just have their own Youtube/Bitchute/Rumble/other channels and let their messages grow organically and let people subscribe to them. If legal to do so they could even monetize the channel to pay for their campaigns. The more popular they are with their constituents, the more ad revenue they make.
[1] - https://id.me/
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...