Thread by @themarkup

Thread🧵
Email is a political battleground. Candidates work hard to spit-polish messages that will raise money and turn out the vote.

But Gmail’s black box sorting algorithm sends many political messages to a separate tab that users may rarely check.📭
themarkup.org/google-the-gia…

We tested to see if Gmail’s algorithm sorted all the presidential candidates’ email the same way —and we found it did not.

We signed up for emails from 16 presidential campaigns. After four months, only 6 percent of candidates’ emails appeared in our primary inbox. The majority went to the promotions inbox. #WheresMyEmail

But there were huge differences. Gmail sent 63 percent of @PeteButtigieg's campaign email to the primary inbox.

But it sent none of @ewarren's campaign email there. And only 2 percent of @BernieSanders's campaign email landed in the primary inbox.

Google told us: “Mail classifications automatically adjust to match users’ preferences and actions.”

In our test, we opened a new Gmail account using a new phone number and Tor, an anonymizing browser. We did not open, move, or label the emails in the inbox.
themarkup.org/google-the-gia…

Read our methodology to learn more about our experiment: themarkup.org/google-the-gia…
/end #WheresMyEmail