Follow the Stack · Advertising
LinkedIn Ads
Advertising platform of LinkedIn, a Microsoft subsidiary. Website ↗
Who runs it
Where its facts come from
See the whole Microsoft group and alternativesDocumented facts (9)
Listed by the White House among the donors funding President Donald Trump's ballroom. Individual amounts were not disclosed. The Washington Post later reported that Microsoft made a contribution in the millions of dollars.
Response: Microsoft declined to comment on the Washington Post report.
A joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call reported that Israel's military intelligence Unit 8200 stored recordings of millions of intercepted phone calls of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank on Microsoft's Azure cloud, with Microsoft engineers working with the unit on the infrastructure. In September 2025 Microsoft said its review had found "evidence that supports elements" of the reporting and disabled the services concerned.
Response: Microsoft initially said it had "no information" about the data stored and was not aware of surveillance of civilians. Brad Smith later wrote: "We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians."
LinkedIn removed "misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals" from the examples of prohibited conduct in the Hateful and Derogatory Content section of its English-language Professional Community Policies, and removed "race or gender identity" from the examples in its harassment policy, without announcing the change. The edit was flagged by the nonprofit Open Terms Archive. GLAAD called it an "overt anti-LGBTQ move".
“misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals”
Response: LinkedIn said it regularly updates its policies and that "personal attacks or intimidation toward anyone based on their identity, including misgendering" still violate its harassment policy and are not allowed on the platform.
The report "From economy of occupation to economy of genocide" (A/HRC/59/23) by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, which describes Israel's campaign in Gaza as genocide, names Microsoft among the companies giving Israel near government-wide access to cloud and AI technologies. It states that when the Israeli military's internal cloud overloaded in October 2023, Microsoft, with its Azure platform, and the Project Nimbus consortium stepped in with critical cloud and AI infrastructure, and that Microsoft has integrated its systems across the Israeli military since 2003.
“Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon grant Israel virtually government-wide access to their cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, enhancing data processing, decision-making and surveillance and analysis capacities.”
Response: On 15 May 2025 Microsoft said: "we have found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people" in the Gaza conflict. On 25 September 2025, after reporting by The Guardian, it said it had "ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD)". Israel called the report politically motivated and legally baseless.
The Associated Press reported in May 2025 that Microsoft had cancelled, according to ICC staffers, the email address of International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan after President Trump sanctioned him by executive order. A Microsoft spokesperson later referred to "the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services".
Response: Microsoft said that "at no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC". Brad Smith said Microsoft's actions "did not in any way involve the cessation of services to the ICC".
Announced a $1 million donation to Donald Trump's 2025 inaugural fund, up from $500,000 to each of the 2017 and 2021 inaugurations. The inaugural committee reported to the Federal Election Commission receiving $750,000 from Microsoft, while Microsoft told Congress it gave $1 million in two installments.
On stage at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in July 2024, after Peter Thiel sarcastically thanked him for funding lawsuits against Donald Trump because they had turned Trump into a "martyr", replied that he wished he had made Trump "an actual martyr", according to Puck News as reported by The Independent. The remark drew attention after the assassination attempt on Trump on 13 July 2024.
“Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr.”
Response: In a post on X after the assassination attempt, Hoffman said the remark had been reported out of context, that he meant Trump being held accountable under the rule of law, that he "meant nothing about any sort of physical harm or violence", and that he condemned the attack.
In September 2021 LinkedIn notified several US journalists and writers, including Axios China reporter Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, writer Melissa Chan and author Greg Bruno, that their profiles would no longer be viewable on its localized China platform because they contained "prohibited content". LinkedIn said it adheres to Chinese government regulations for that version and offered to review the profiles' accessibility in China if they were edited. Earlier, in March 2021, Chinese internet regulators had penalised LinkedIn for failing to control political content and it halted new sign-ups in China for 30 days. The Committee to Protect Journalists called for the profiles to be restored.
“We're a global platform that respects the laws that apply to us, including adhering to Chinese government regulations”
Response: On 14 October 2021 LinkedIn announced it would close its localized social network in China, citing "a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China", and replace it with a jobs-only app, InJobs.
Promoted in a January 2018 blog post its Azure Government cloud work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying it met the standards to handle ICE's "most sensitive unclassified data" and let employees "utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification". The section was briefly deleted and then restored in June 2018, as the family separation policy at the border drew criticism.
Response: Microsoft said an employee had briefly deleted the section by mistake after seeing social media commentary. It said it was "dismayed by the forcible separation of children from their families at the border" and that it did not believe ICE was using its services for anything to do with separating families.