LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional networking social media platform owned by Microsoft Corporation. With over 1 billion users globally, LinkedIn serves as the dominant platform for professional networking and recruitment.

Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion, making it one of the largest technology acquisitions in history. The acquisition has integrated LinkedIn's professional networking data with Microsoft's productivity tools and cloud services, creating extensive data sharing capabilities across the Microsoft ecosystem.

Microsoft's Corporate Complicity

As a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation, LinkedIn is directly implicated in its parent company's extensive military contracts and surveillance operations. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has designated Microsoft as a "priority BDS target" due to the company's central role in facilitating apartheid and genocide.

Microsoft provides critical cloud computing and AI technologies to the Israeli military through its Azure platform. Leaked documents reveal that the Israeli military became one of Microsoft's top AI customers, with Azure cloud storage increasing 60% above pre-conflict levels and AI tools usage seeing a 20-fold increase during military operations in Gaza.

LinkedIn's professional database provides valuable intelligence for military AI systems, offering detailed information about global business networks, government connections, and infrastructure personnel. The platform's data feeds into Microsoft's broader military AI systems through automated data sharing within the Microsoft ecosystem.

BDS Targeting and Employee Resistance

The Palestinian BDS National Committee has designated Microsoft as a "priority BDS target" describing it as:

perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel's illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide.

The campaign calls for boycotting Microsoft gaming products and pressuring institutions to divest from Microsoft services.

Microsoft employees have organized through campaigns like "No Azure for Apartheid" to challenge corporate complicity in human rights violations. Recent firings of employees who disrupted company events demonstrate Microsoft's shift toward aggressive retaliation against workplace dissent.

LinkedIn faces its own labor controversies, including a $1.8 million settlement for systematic gender-based pay discrimination affecting 686 female employees. The Department of Labor found "systemic" discrimination in engineering, product, and marketing roles.

Privacy Violations and Surveillance

LinkedIn received a record €310 million fine from Irish data protection authorities in October 2024 for systematic GDPR violations. The investigation found that LinkedIn illegally processed both member data and data from third-party partners to create detailed behavioral profiles for advertising purposes without proper legal basis.

Intelligence agencies actively exploit LinkedIn for espionage operations. U.S. intelligence officials describe LinkedIn as a "gold mine" for foreign intelligence services seeking to recruit government and corporate insiders through fake professional profiles.

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