According to a new study by North Carolina State University’s Department of Computer Science, titled “A Peek into the Political Biases in Email Spam Filtering Algorithms During US Election 2020,” the college looked to see if spam filtering algorithms (SFAs) are biased towards certain ideologies and political stances.
To accurately estimate the political biases and mitigate any potential effects of demographics (ethnicity, age, and gender), we created multiple email accounts with different combinations of demographic factors and designed two experiments. The first experiment studies the general trends of biases in SFAs across the email services for the Presidential, Senate and House candidates. The second experiment studies the impact of different email interactions such as reading the emails, marking them as spam, or vice versa on the biases in SFAs. We designed an automated process to perform all the subscriptions, and took periodic backups to keep all the email accounts active as well as to keep track of the correct number of spam emails received over the course of data collection for each of the three services.
We made several important observations in our study. For example, as an aggregate trend, Gmail leaned towards the left while Outlook and Yahoo leaned towards the right. Yahoo retained about half of all the political emails in inbox (up to 55.2% marked as spam) while outlook filtered out the vast majority of emails (over 71.8%) from all political candidates and marked them as spam. Gmail, however, retained the majority of left-wing candidate emails in inbox (< 10.12% marked as spam) while sent the majority of right-wing candidate emails to the spam folder (up to 77.2% marked as spam).
Study authors explained
And days leading up to an election, the study “observed that the percentage of emails marked by Gmail as spam from the right-wing candidates grew steadily as the election date approached while the percentage of emails marked as spam from the left-wing candidates remained about the same.”
The spam filtering algorithms (SFAs) in the widely-used email services of today such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo do not provide any transparency on their internal workings. Given the lack of this transparency, an important question to study is whether these SFAs hold any biases towards certain political affiliations.
This question is motivated by the growing body of evidence suggesting that the biases in online algorithms can influence undecided voters. For example, Epstein et al. showed that the bias in search rankings can shift the voting preferences of the undecided voters by as much as 20% without those voters being aware of the manipulation.
While we have no reason to believe that there were deliberate attempts from these email services to create these biases to influence the voters, the fact remains there that their SFAs have learnt to mark more emails from one political affiliation as spam compared to the other. As these prominent email services are actively used by a sizable chunk of voting population and as many of the voters today rely on the information they see (or don’t see) online, such biases may have an unignorable impact on the outcomes of an election.
We further observe that Gmail marks a significantly higher percentage (67.6%) of emails from the right as spam compared to the emails from left (just 8.2%). Gmail marked 59.3% more emails from the right candidates as spam compared to the left candidates.
Gmail and Yahoo, the number of emails from the left and from the right have a noticeable influence on the percentages of their emails marked as spam. However, such influence is not seen in the case of Outlook.
We conclude by noting that fairness of spam filtering algorithm is an important problem that needs dedicated attention from email service providers, particularly due to the enormous influence that electronic communication has in our lives today and will have going forward. Therefore, there is an imminent need to develop techniques that reduce the biases of SFAs while simultaneously ensuring that the users do not receive unwanted emails.
The authors stated further
In response to the findings, a Google spokesperson told Fox News Digital,
Political affiliation has absolutely no bearing on mail classifications in Gmail and we’ve debunked this suggestion, which has surfaced periodically from across the political spectrum, for many years. Mail classifications in Gmail automatically adjust to match Gmail users’ preferences and actions. Gmail users can move messages to spam, or to any other category. Gmail automatically adjusts the classifications of particular emails according to these user actions.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
[25] How forcible are right words! but what doth your arguing reprove? [26] Do ye imagine to reprove words, and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind?Job 6:25-26
Many of you have written to me explaining that you are not getting your emails: minus a few technical difficulties on my end, another problem has been email providers and internet browsers trying to burry WinePress emails, compacted by big-tech suck-ups like Duck Duck Go burring sites that promote “Russian disinformation;” a lot less eyeballs get to see our work.
So, PLEASE, check your emails, and if your browser and email provider continues to block and direct our work to the spam folder. If so, you may have to sign-up with a new email address, or remember to log on daily to make sure you don’t miss any reports.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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Just FYI Jacob: I sent ya a report of a rockstar groupie who was a pervert named Cynthia Plaster Caster. Recently she died and I figured she needs some refuting with the scriptures.
The false teachers need the harshest of refuting because they’re the worst; but why not throw in a refuting of that pervert rock groupie.
NOTE: I sent ya a “modest” pic of her, the rest of her photos are perverted and almost pornographic because Cynthia Plaster Caster made plaster molds of rockstar’s male members. If you think it’s a bad idea to make a post, then don’t do it, it’s just a suggestion.
I have found that Microsoft Outlook is sending emails they do not like directly to my deleted folder. They never hit inbox or junk. So I have to constantly sort my real deletions from my mail I wish to save. I have begun to transfer my subscriptions to protonmail, but some sites do nto wish to change. Lifenews I have been unable to change.
I accidentally unsubscribed to your email. I would like to continue my subscription.