Microsoft confirms censoring employee emails containing words related to Palestine & Israel's war on Gaza
WikiCommons
"Microsoft Says It’s Censoring Employee Emails Containing the Word “Palestine”", 22 May 2025s
Following multiple employee-led protests against the company’s contracts with the Israeli military, Microsoft workers discovered that any emails they send containing the word “Palestine” inexplicably disappear.
...employees...began noticing that email messages sent from their company account containing a handful of keywords related to Palestine and Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza were not transmitted as expected. In some cases, employees say the emails arrived after many hours. Other emails never even made it to the intended recipient’s inbox at all.
Keywords subject to the disruption, according to employee test messages shared with The Intercept, include “Palestine,” “Gaza,” “apartheid,” and “genocide.”...Emails mentioning Israel appear to have gone through immediately.
In an email to The Intercept, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw confirmed and defended the blockage. “Emailing large numbers of employees about any topic not related to work is not appropriate. We have a established forum for employees who have opted in to political issues. Over the past couple of days, a number of politically focused emails have been sent to tens of thousands of employees across the company and we have taken measures to try and reduce those emails to those that have not opted in.”
The heavy-handed approach, however, is not just deterring messages sent to large numbers of recipients, but also blocking all emails mentioning Palestine...
The email disruption comes after multiple demonstrations at the four-day Microsoft Build developer conference this week. The protests were organized by current and former Microsoft employees with No Azure for Apartheid, an advocacy group demanding the suspension of the company’s work with the Israeli government...