The Markup: Gmail redirects 90% of Black Lives Matter emails to the "promotions" or "spam" bins
Bruce Hahne
Nonprofit news organization The Markup released a story today indicating that Gmail directs the vast majority of email messages from racial justice organizations to either the "promotions" or "spam" folders, rather than to the recipient's primary inbox. In the most egregious case, emails containing the phrase "Movement for Black lives" were sent to the promotions bucket 86% of the time, spam 14% of the time, and NONE were sent to the recipient's primary email inbox.
Some extracts from the Markup article are below. The full article includes a table of email categorization results based on 11 different categories.
- Bruce
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https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/02/to-gmail-black-lives-matter-emails-are-promotions
To Gmail, Most Black Lives Matter Emails Are “Promotions”
As protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement continue around the United States, Gmail is treating emails from advocacy and political groups referring to racial justice issues like marketing emails.
The Markup analyzed hundreds of emails sent to a test Gmail account from more than 200 candidates and organizations from across the political spectrum from whom we’d signed up to receive communications. Of the emails referring to racial justice received since George Floyd was killed in May, Gmail sent seven in 10 to the less-visible “promotions” tab, which the company says is for “deals, offers, and other marketing emails.”
We also analyzed 22 emails we received from eight racial justice groups over 10 days starting on June 19 and found Gmail sent nine in 10 to the promotions tab. The groups were: The Bail Project, Black Lives Matter, Color of Change, Justice for George NYC, NAACP, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Reclaim the Block, and the Youth Justice Coalition...
“People across the country are looking to racial justice groups like Color of Change to keep them informed and provide opportunities to create change,” said Evan Feeney, the group’s campaign director. “That Google is treating these messages the same as a coupon from a store that you signed up for their mailing list that one time is absurd.”...
In an email, Google spokesperson Brooks Hocog declined to comment...
A representative from Justice for George NYC said in an email that Gmail addresses account for 85 percent of its mailing list and said it’s “incredibly inaccurate” to categorize the group’s emails, which provide opportunities for New Yorkers to “engage in anti-racism advocacy,” as marketing...
A coalition of advocacy groups, including Color of Change, approached Google in 2018 about the way their emails were being categorized after they noticed a drop in petition signatures and noticed the percentage of emails winding up in the promotions tab had increased. Google granted them a series of phone calls, but nothing changed, several members of the coalition said. Google would not discuss its interactions with those groups with The Markup...