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Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), John Thune (R-SD), and colleagues introduced the Political Bias in Algorithm Sorting (BIAS) Emails Act. This legislation would ban large email platforms, such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo Mail, from using filtering algorithms that automatically label emails from political campaigns as spam, unless users choose to apply the labels themselves. It would also require more transparency from such Big Tech companies on the sorting practices they use to filter emails.
 
“It’s time to hold Big Tech accountable for its shameless partisan censorship,” Rubio said. “This bill would empower users to have more control over their email inbox preferences and expose the filtering practices of these large platforms.”
 
“I’ve long believed that Congress should hold Big Tech accountable to the users who rely on its platforms – for everything from email to social media – and empower those consumers to make their own online decisions, free from Big Tech’s heavy hand,” Thune said. “I’m proud to lead this effort that would prohibit large online platforms from censoring emails through filtered algorithms – a process that ultimately discriminates against political campaigns. Consumers should be able to choose what they want to see, not Google. It’s long past time for Big Tech to be held accountable for its blatant bias, and this bill would be an important step in that direction.”
 
Click here for a full list of original cosponsors.
 
Specifically, the BIAS Emails Act would: 

• Ban email services from using filtering algorithms on emails sent by federal political campaigns or campaign committees, unless an email user took action to apply a spam label (or some other filter) for the email.
• Require email services to produce quarterly transparency reports with statistics regarding instances in which federal Republican and Democrat campaigns and campaign committees were flagged as spam.
• Require email services, upon request from political campaigns, to provide reports to campaigns with statistics regarding instances of communications being flagged as spam. The bill limits the frequency with which campaigns may request these reports.