US approves Google plan to let political emails bypass Gmail spam filter

arstechnica.com

28 points·carride··11 comments

Politicians are the worst at abusing email. I donated once to Obama in 2008 and now I can’t stop getting emails and texts from dozens of other democratic candidates.

Nancy Pelosi spams me from different numbers, after I tell her to stop each time. Is this the sort of thing that makes people like, trust, and vote for you? Or is it just desperation or cynicism?

The Democratic SMS spam is far worse, since most phone apps don't let you create filters based on content.

Google voice won't allow me to send MMS/SMS that are political to a friend I've texted for years anymore. It was a picture making fun of alex jones. T-mobile also is censoring MMS.

_Can_ whine to the FEC, _can't_ find a vendor that knows how to configure DNS records for sending email.

This isn't the problem.

The problem is that campaigns use absolutely relentless email barrages, often with alarming or upsetting subject lines.

Then their own supporters get fed up and mark them as spam, and you get into the situation you're in now.

I receive 2-3 campaign SMS messages a day, and they all go straight to spam because they trigger Google Fi's automatic filters.

I mean, the volume is absolutely an issue but it looks like they failed to configure DKIM/DMARC/SPF and this is a lazy policy end run around a gap in technical knowledge. I'm not surprised, but it is a bit amusing.

Yet more reason to ditch gmail

And use what instead? Any large-scale spam filter will have the same problem.

Proton not being US based can ignore this stuff.

The need for the bypass indicates what is wrong with political marketing: too low standards, too much disinformation.

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