It’s known Facebook and Twitter customize news feeds – but a new report from The Markup reveals how Google’s email curation could have consequences in 2020
For the most part, Gmail did not place email from presidential candidates in the primary inbox during our experiment (Oct. 16 2019 to Feb. 12 2020), but some had better results than others. The pace of emails sent by each of them also varied. *Gabbard was added in November; Bloomberg and Steyer, in February. **We signed up to receive emails from Donaldjtrump.com but didn’t receive any. Photograph: The Markup
For the most part, Gmail did not place email from presidential candidates in the primary inbox during our experiment (Oct. 16 2019 to Feb. 12 2020), but some had better results than others. The pace of emails sent by each of them also varied. *Gabbard was added in November; Bloomberg and Steyer, in February. **We signed up to receive emails from Donaldjtrump.com but didn’t receive any. Photograph: The Markup
Some fear that, as a result, Gmail has the same conflict of interest that exists on social networks: if the platforms make it too easy to reach people for nothing, no one will buy ads.
“The worry is that they want to basically turn Gmail into a Facebook-style news feed where you have to pay for placement in the inbox,” said Ryan Alexander, a Democratic digital consultant.
Wattie, the Google spokeswoman, replied: “What you describe is not on our roadmap for Gmail.”
Gmail isn’t the only email provider offering sophisticated inbox curation. The premium $30-a-month email provider Superhuman sorts messages into “important” and “other”, while Microsoft’s Outlook sorts messages for its “focused inbox”. Outlook and Yahoo also sell ads in their inboxes in free accounts.
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