Last year, the Media Research Center hyped a study it claimed showed that the spam filter on Google’s Gmail is purportedly biased against conservative fundraising emails by marking more of them as spam — though it hid that the study also found that the alleged bias largely disappears as users read emails and mark them as spam on their own and the Gmail learns from that behavior. The MRC also censored the fact that a study co-author called out right-wingers for misrepresenting the results of the study. Nevertheless, the MRC’s misleading narrative helped goad the Republican National Committee into suing Google over the purported bias.
Well, the case got tossed out of court, and Luis Cornelio spent an Aug. 30 post ranting about it:
A federal judge tossed a Republican National Committee lawsuit that alleged Google buried fundraising emails.
In a major loss for free speech, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta dismissed an RNC lawsuit seeking to hold Google accountable for what Republicans described as email suppression. The RNC alleged that Google’s Gmail intentionally sent 20 million Republican campaign emails to spam over the course of 6 days. However, Calabretta, a Biden appointee, claimed on August 24 that Section 230 shielded Google from the lawsuit. You read that correctly. The judge ruled that, “[w]hile is a close case,” the RNC failed to show “Google acted in bad faith” in suppressing emails, “and that doing so was protected by section 230,” according to standards set forth in a previous Supreme Court case.
[…]In October 2022, the RNC filed a lawsuit against Google, citing a study that found that the Big Tech giant’s algorithms buried GOP emails in an apparent attempt to thwart the political party’s fundraiser emails. At the time, the RNC argued that Google pushed “millions of RNC emails en masse to potential donors’ and supporters’ spam folders during pivotal points in election fundraising and community building.”
Google maintained its innocence through the lawsuit. “The RNC is wrong,” Google claimed in a filing, reported by The Washington Post on August 24. “Gmail’s spam filtering policies apply equally to emails from all senders, whether they are politically affiliated or not.” The judge agreed, going as far as demanding that the RNC fix the suit to demonstrate — despite the growing evidence showing otherwise — that Google acted with a “lack of good faith.”
Of course, Cornelio and the rest of the MRC have acted in bad faith by making Google a political scapegoat so it can push its right-wing victimhood narrative, making it a poor judge of what it calls “bad faith” on Google’s part. He also censored the finding from ther original study that the biases disappear as users engage with Gmail.
Cornelio also dutifully quoted the head of the RNC sticking to the narrative:
“This case is not over,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in reaction to the lawsuit. “The judge has given us leave to amend and re-file our complaint. This suit represents a crucial action against Big Tech’s anti-conservative bias. We look forward to filing our amended complaint and continuing this fight.”
Most ludicrously, Cornelio touted the MRC/RNC allegations as a “BOMBSHELL” in the headline of his post. If that so-called bombshell gets tossed out of court for lack of evidence, it’s not a “bombshell” — it’s a failed and frivolous lawsuit.