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Is this something google is being pressured to do or do they really consider this a good idea? I mean. What’s in it for them?

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It says it in the article. Basically it's a way to get around the bias question.

What I don't get is why they need to talk to the FEC anyway? Are they obligated to provide spam detection? Couldn't they just decide to not spam these emails rather than making a big deal out of it?

They’re stuck working with the FEC due to the complaint alleging that their spam rules are illegal de facto donations. At this point, they’d want to make sure any major changes to political email filtering are acceptable to the regulator.

Also by asking the FEC to weigh in and approve this before moving forward, google is in a much stronger position: if they’re not approved to move forward, the FEC can now be the bad guy; if they do approve to move forward, then they don’t get hit later because the FEC gave the stamp of approval.

They can sell metrics about the emails (e.g. open rate) to the campaigns.

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