Google will now exempt political campaigns from Gmail's spam filters

• The FEC approved Google's request to allow political campaign emails to bypass Gmail's spam filters.
• Google previously asked the commission to approve the political filtering program after it received a backlash from Republicans.
• Users will retain control over the political campaign emails they receive and can direct them to the spam folder if they so choose.

Following the approval of a pilot program that was criticized by Republicans, political campaign emails will now be able to circumvent Gmail's filters even if they contain junk mail.

Political emails sent by authorized candidate committees, political party committees, and leadership political action committees have been given the green light by the US Federal Election Commission.

The search giant sent a request to the commission in June to see if the program would be considered a political contribution. The Federal Election Campaign Act states that private companies are not allowed to give money to federal candidates.

The FEC considers the program to be in keeping with the normal practices of the company. According to the commission, the pilot program is legal.

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The program will need to be applied for by political candidates and party committees. The accusations that it disproportionately filters Republican campaign emails were made.

Users will be asked if they want to receive this type of email in the future. They will be able to decide how they want to receive political campaigns and send them to their junk mail.

The FEC said that unless a user opts out in the first message or any subsequent messages from a particular sender, the user would continue to receive messages from that sender. Gmail users would be able to express their preferences at any time and affect future delivery by marking a sender's message as either junk or not junk.

Users need to be able to easily opt out of receiving political emails.

The positive and negative feedback received during the public comment period will be reflected by the company.

The goal of the pilot program is to assess alternative ways of addressing concerns from bulk senders while giving users clear controls over their inboxes.