Dozens of pages of racist and anti-Semitic material are being hosted by Microsoft, an investigation by the Telegraph has found.

A number of posts inciting racial hatred, including calls to set Muslims and MPs' homes on fire, assault transgender people and share anti-Semitic slurs, are being kept online by Microsoft as part of its cloud computing services.

The firm, one of the largest in the world with a market value of £590bn, provides the IT services for a social network called Gab.ai and benefits from subscription fees. One post, in Gab’s “Brexit” group, displays a rifle with the caption “wh--- and ni---- repellent".

Another, which was posted repeatedly over the course of several days, claims that Jewish people were responsible for “all labour and sex slavery” and is illustrated by a cartoon of an old man with a large nose.

In appearance, Gab is a similar service to Facebook but is aimed at bastions of the "alt-Right" and free speech movement. It was founded by former Silicon Valley engineer Andrew Torba after he felt he was being penalised for having conservative views and had suffered censorship among the “liberal elite” working for technology companies.