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Every time Bill Gates comes up in the news I'm reminded by how insane the conspiracy theories surrounding him have become on social media, more so now than ever
by tempsy 6y ago
Every time Bill Gates comes up in the news I'm reminded by how insane the conspiracy theories surrounding him have become on social media, more so now than ever.
- canada_dry 6y agoI think for some people it's just really hard imagining that Gates pivoted his ruthless passion for business (emphasis on ruthless) into a genuine mission to make the world - especially the impoverished - a better place. Feeney, Buffett, and Gates need to be celebrated and revered way more than sports and movie idols IMHO.
- colourgarden 6y agoCould you give a summary of how Bill Gates is viewed by "the average American"? As a Brit, I think he's just viewed as "the rich computer guy". It's hard to fathom that people think he's involved with political topics.
- triyambakam 6y ago> It's hard to fathom that people think he's involved with political topics. Maybe hard to fathom, but just have a closer look and you'll see he has a lot of irons in the fire
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- iancmceachern 6y agoCheck out the work of the Gates foundation, working to eliminate Polio, etc.
- Aeolun 6y agoMuch less so than any owner of Twitter, Google or Facebook is anyway. Microsoft is just selling unopinionated software to all businesses in the world. Out of all FAANG they’re the least politically aligned.
- bena 6y agoHell, they're so not FAANG, they're not even in the acronym. But I get it. If I were slotting tech companies into eras, they'd be before Facebook/Google, but after the real old school guys like IBM, AT&T, and Xerox.
- jakear 6y agoI was thinking about this yesterday, and if FAANG means “big tech companies with continued big growth”, M is more deserving of the title than, for instance, G. FAAN all have over 300% return over past 5 years, as does M. G however is at like 130%, roughly the same as the Nasdaq. Which to me roughly means they aren’t growing faster than the average tech company (NASDAQ being roughly an index of tech) (Work at M, may be biased :) )
- throw_away 6y agoI also felt that the N was out of place as its market cap is about 1/3 the next smallest (FB at $0.77B vs. $0.22B). The rest (and MSFT) are all > $1B. NFLX has a lower cap than NVDA, ADBE, and PYPL (and TSLA and BABA).
- kabacha 6y ago> Microsoft is just selling unopinionated software to all businesses in the world You have to be satirical right? Microsoft is notorious for lobbying everything to this day. Browser monopolies, OS monopolies, they pretty much invented EEE, made whole cities switch to their OS and the whole xbox platform is very political regarding software, gambling and IP politics.
- barry-cotter 6y agoHe asked about how the average American views Bill Gates, not how the average person who read /. in the 90s views Bill Gates.
- Shared404 6y agoI have mixed feelings about Bill Gates. He is doing good things with his fortune now, but Microsoft are/were not the good guys.
- tasuki 6y agoMicrosoft always stole from the rich. Now Gates is giving to the poor. It could be worse :)
- preommr 6y agoAre you not familiar with the very prevalent conspiracy theories about him wanting to microchip people, how the coronavirus vaccine is his attempt to do, etc? It's been all over the internet. Here's a bbc article: https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648 https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648
- qiqitori 6y agoOn the internet, things can be "very prevalent" to one person (figuratively speaking) and "never heard of" to most other people.
- thinkharderdev 6y agoMy sense is that in America, people outside the tech world don't even think of him as the founder of Microsoft anymore. He's just Bill Gates the incredibly rich philanthropist.
- johannes1234321 6y agoIn conspiracy theories he is the inventory of COVID, in order to sell his vaccine, which is used to inject microchips into the population in order to control everybody. For people who take a serious look he is a respected philanthropist doing lots of funding of polio research and other related topics. The average won't know much about him, he is the Windows guy, rich ... that's about it.
- garbagetime 6y agoIsn't one using his extreme wealth for (what he sees as) the good of the people just the baseline amount of "not being selfish" required for not being a terrible person? I think that one person is much worse at charity than a public organisation dedicated to it would be. So, these people are (1) simply not being evil or extremely stupid (2) there are much better ways of having charity done. Therefore, I don't see why these people should be revered.
- yenwodyah 6y agoIf spending billions of dollars on the betterment of hunanity, for no personal gain, isn't worth of praise, what is?
- hh3k0 6y agoIt is indeed a praiseworthy endeavor. That being said, society should not be at the mercy of the whims of billionaires. Their very existence is a grave error.
- garbagetime 6y agoSure, I agree that a person who spends his time trying to do good things for society is generally praiseworthy. I praise people who do good things all the time. But there's a massive difference between (a) praising someone and (b) having society revere per. If we should revere anyone, it's certainly not the person whose great achievement was to spend lots more money than the next person.
- thinkharderdev 6y agoExtremely rich people who are more or less retired from whatever it is that made them extremely rich in the first place often spend their twilight years focused on "philanthropy." So in general, I don't think Bill Gates should get some sort of special recognition for that. However, what I think he does deserve some level special recognition for is what he is devoting his philanthropic efforts toward, which is making a tangible difference for the worlds poorest and worst off people. It can be credibly argued that the efforts of the Gates foundations have saved many millions of lives and alleviated a huge amount of suffering. I also disagree with the argument that a public organization would be more effective. If by "public" you mean government-run then such an organization would almost certainly be focused on helping relatively wealthy (by global standards) middle and working class Americans. It seems unlikely that they would focus their efforts on something like eradicating polio in the developing world. Public institutions are good and American should have more of a social safety net but I think it's probably a good thing that individual American billionaires are focusing their philanthropy on things that would be politically awkward because the people who benefit directly don't get to vote in US elections.
- abraxas 6y agoI always assumed that Bill was not a good person at his core or at least was steered into shady shit by Ballmer but it was Melinda that brought out the best in him and hence his metamorphosis later in his career. Who knows though. The fact is however, that during much of the nineties Microsoft was engaged in some really awful stuff and Bill was incredibly glib about it.
- ip26 6y agoIn retrospect, was it really "terrible person" level? I mean, I recall a lot of stories about throwing their weight around that were playing kind of dirty/hardball. But from the vantage point of 2020, with Theranos, Uber, Fyre, Dieselgate, Wirecard, the NSA and so on, I start to think, while they were ruthless competitors, were they particularly evil?
- abraxas 6y agoI’m not sure if you’re too young or just don’t remember anymore but in the late nineties Microsoft literally tried to coopt the entire web. The embrace, extend and extinguish strategy wasn’t going to end with their domination of operating systems or office suites. The unholy combo of Internet Explorer and ActiveX were designed to ensure that the web would only properly function on a Microsoft platform. We literally squeaked through by the skin of our teeth thanks to the fiasco of ActiveX due to its myriad of security holes and a meteoric rise of Google who were strongly opposed to the shit Microsoft was trying to pull off. That said, in the 1997-2000 time frame things were looking incredibly bleak for the future of open web protocols. So much so that most companies were abandoning official support for any browser that wasn’t IE. We really got within a millimeter of a global, proprietary MSInternet. Count your lucky stars they failed in their most ambitious embrace and extend project.
- ip26 6y agoYeah, I know, and I'm certainly happy for the open-ish web. It just strikes me as pretty low on the "evil" scale compared to everything else that's been going on. Do you remember the kids-for-cash scandal?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yholio 6y agoGeorge Soros says: "I am proud of the enemies I have". While I understand why people hate Soros, since he makes no secret he wants to influence the politics for humanistic goals, it's harder to understand for Bill Gates. The main ideea seems to be that he supports vaccines, and that he was pretty vocal during the pandemic and predicted it some years in advance.
- compiler-guy 6y agoBill Gates has come a long way since the days of absolutely ruthless Microsoft. It's not surprising that there are still many people whose lives were made worse by its business practices who really do not like Bill Gates, and are inclined to believe bad things about him. I'm one of those people whose livelihoods was negatively impacted by all that, and for a long time I really didn't like him. He is doing amazing work now, but it is pretty hard to get past that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vkou 6y ago> Bill Gates has come a long way since the days of absolutely ruthless Microsoft. It's not surprising that there are still many people whose lives were made worse by its business practices who really do not like Bill Gates, and are inclined to believe bad things about him. I don't think there's much of an intersection between some pissed off techies who worked in the industry in the late 90s, and the millions of batshit insane people who think that he is part of the Zionist deep state conducting mass sterilization through COVID vaccine microchips.
- fnord77 6y agothe relationship between Gates and Jeffrey Epstein that was cultivated after Epstein's conviction on sex crimes is not a conspiracy theory. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...
- mhh__ 6y agoEpstein was a powerful man, was it a friendship or just business?
- flyinglizard 6y agoThat, my friend, depends on which party you support.
- xwdv 6y agoI'm not so sure. While Epstein committed heinous crimes, he certainly must have had other legitimate interests when he wasn't doing them. People aren't one dimensional.
- Jarwain 6y agoThe implication the above person is making is that one's beliefs around epstein depends on their political leaning. But, people are complicated. I remember reading somewhere that he was a generous donor to a number of schools & STEM programs, that he was a patron of the sciences, and an abhorrent sex offender. They aren't exactly mutually exclusive, but just goes to show how people are complex and multifaceted
- bashallah 6y agoHe was really good at obtaining compromising information of the most wealthy individuals around the world.
- JoBrad 6y agoI think that’s what the extreme elements of various groups want you to believe. Creating Shibboleths out of so many things is yet another way to drive people apart. Fact is that many people have no idea what Gates does, nor do they care - regardless of which US political party they support.
- trentnix 6y agoWith great respect to Bill Gates and his accomplishments, a bit of skepticism toward anyone whose expressed intent is to “change the world” (and who has the means to do) is not unreasonable. That certainly doesn’t justify insane conspiracy theories and I’ve no interest in aligning myself with any of them, but it is possible to find such ambition disconcerting without assigning malice.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThe most stupid fact about those conspiracy theories is that people carry a smartphone with GPS, microphone and camera that is unlocked with fingerprints, and take pictures of their faces every day to social networks, yet, they're absolutely terrified of "being tracked by microchips injected via vaccines". If someone wanted to put something into your bloodstream they could simply put it in your food, your medicines, your eyedrops or your deodorant or whatever. Or sell you clothes with the stupid microchip in it, all of which is unnecessary since they have your phone. Even if you turn GPS off, it is possible to locate you by triangulating your phone using cellular network antennas, or via Wifi, since the WiFi networks you can see have an associated location assigned to them by wardriving cars (e.g.: Google Street View cars).
- AdamN 6y agoWe all should be worried about these conspiracies. They're growing in intensity and are corrosive.
- JasonFruit 6y agoDo you mean we should worry about conspiracies, or about conspiracy theories? Your answer could be read either way.
- disown 6y agoEvery time Bill Gates comes up in the news, you should realize it is PR. Just like his website is something his PR team created. The thing about PR is that it works. Look at all the comments fawning over and idolizing Gates in this thread. Something you'd never have imagined in the 90s or 00s. For all the talk here about how PR and ads don't work and ad spending is a waste of time, it sure seems like it works wonders on the HN crowd.
- adolfojp 6y agoWhat is Bill Gates selling?
- parenthesis 6y agoHis place in history?
- mncharity 6y agoPeople often tell pretty stories, to themselves and to others, about who they are, and what they do. Rich people often have skilled artists print and paint those stories. Completeness, fairness, correctness... are not much selected for. Reflecting well on themselves, and supporting what they do, are. So for example, there was a PR/press story of Gates "turning his attention to opportunities for innovation in VR", not one of "he's helping his colleague Myhrvold patent troll VR, because the opportunities there are too rich to pass up". Or here, Gates's dad "pushed him to excel", not as an old biography suggested IIRC, "taught him the most important thing was to win, leaving him ethically impaired". As a rule of thumb, if you hear a self-serving story that lacks nuance, it's likely... incomplete. Maybe someday, hagiography will work less well, and we'll get self-serving stories with nuance, but for now, that doesn't seem the common case.
- bobthechef 6y agoThat Funke is some kind of something. Boy, this Funke is all anybody's ever talking about.
- m463 6y agoDid he really abandon his car at the curb of the airport departures terminal?