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Off-topic; some accounts come out only in these type of articles and are immediately flagged to death for their comments. Are these bots or people with notifica

Off-topic; some accounts come out only in these type of articles and are immediately flagged to death for their comments. Are these bots or people with notifications set to trigger at Bill Gates or covid or climate change or something? These accounts basically have 90%+ inflammatory and flagged-to-death comments, so they must be here for this alone?

potbelly83 4y ago
In all fairness, Gates does fly around the world in his private jet, live in huge energy consuming mansions, all the while expecting us commoners to live an ascetic life. If these people where serious in instrumenting change, maybe they could start setting an example by the life they lead?
- credit_guy 4y ago
  He's not advocating for "commoners to live an ascetic life". On the contrary, he keeps pointing out that we want the few billion people who currently live in Africa, Asia, South America and consume one tenth the energy consumed by the average American to be able to increase their standard of living, and thus, their energy consumption. Where are you on this topic? If you then envision a doubling of energy consumption, how do you square it with achieving net zero? Bill Gates has a plan, and he bothered to write it down in details. As for his personal carbon footprint, he's rich enough to afford carbon offsets, which he buys [1]. Does that constitute "setting an example by the life he leads" ? [1] https://www.greenbiz.com/article/bill-gates-doing-his-part-climate-now-its-time-corporations-do-theirs https://www.greenbiz.com/article/bill-gates-doing-his-part-c...
  - leereeves 4y ago
    Carbon offsets are a lie that is "worse than doing nothing"[1]. They "don’t actually cancel out – er, offset – the emissions to which they are linked".[2] Instead, they greenwash additional emissions. 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/484007a https://www.nature.com/articles/484007a 2: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/the-biggest-problem-with-carbon-offsetting-is-that-it-doesnt-really-work/ https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/the-biggest-problem-with-...
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      Maybe so. But on the other hand, maybe whatever Bill Gates does, he would still be guilty in your eyes.
      - leereeves 4y ago
        I'd give him credit if he actually did reduce his emissions down to that of an average American.
  - hackrnusr 4y ago
    It's hard to take anything that Gates says seriously anymore. Any or all of it could be a smoke screen to distract attention away from this: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gates-microsoft-epstein-cover-up-continues/ https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gates-microsoft-...
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
My bet is that it is regular HN readers who use throw away accounts to post this. Those are actual positions of people. They just don't want their regular accounts burned on them. Since posting well thought out posts on these topics will get downvoted regardless, and they already use throwaway, they don't have any reason to expend effort. So they just come out like this. They want the opposing voice to be heard but the structure here is just encouraging low effort inflammatory posts on throwaway on controversial topics instead of long posts on real account that get downvoted to oblivion anyway. I might even get downvoted to oblivion for simply having some empathy to their position regardless of how politely I wrote this.
pcdoodle 4y ago
Bill spends hundreds of millions on personal PR, what you are seeing could be related in some way.

potbelly83 4y ago

In all fairness, Gates does fly around the world in his private jet, live in huge energy consuming mansions, all the while expecting us commoners to live an ascetic life. If these people where serious in instrumenting change, maybe they could start setting an example by the life they lead?

credit_guy 4y ago
He's not advocating for "commoners to live an ascetic life". On the contrary, he keeps pointing out that we want the few billion people who currently live in Africa, Asia, South America and consume one tenth the energy consumed by the average American to be able to increase their standard of living, and thus, their energy consumption. Where are you on this topic? If you then envision a doubling of energy consumption, how do you square it with achieving net zero? Bill Gates has a plan, and he bothered to write it down in details. As for his personal carbon footprint, he's rich enough to afford carbon offsets, which he buys [1]. Does that constitute "setting an example by the life he leads" ? [1] https://www.greenbiz.com/article/bill-gates-doing-his-part-climate-now-its-time-corporations-do-theirs https://www.greenbiz.com/article/bill-gates-doing-his-part-c...
- leereeves 4y ago
  Carbon offsets are a lie that is "worse than doing nothing"[1]. They "don’t actually cancel out – er, offset – the emissions to which they are linked".[2] Instead, they greenwash additional emissions. 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/484007a https://www.nature.com/articles/484007a 2: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/the-biggest-problem-with-carbon-offsetting-is-that-it-doesnt-really-work/ https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/the-biggest-problem-with-...
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    Maybe so. But on the other hand, maybe whatever Bill Gates does, he would still be guilty in your eyes.
    - leereeves 4y ago
      I'd give him credit if he actually did reduce his emissions down to that of an average American.
- hackrnusr 4y ago
  It's hard to take anything that Gates says seriously anymore. Any or all of it could be a smoke screen to distract attention away from this: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gates-microsoft-epstein-cover-up-continues/ https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gates-microsoft-...

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

My bet is that it is regular HN readers who use throw away accounts to post this. Those are actual positions of people. They just don't want their regular accounts burned on them. Since posting well thought out posts on these topics will get downvoted regardless, and they already use throwaway, they don't have any reason to expend effort. So they just come out like this. They want the opposing voice to be heard but the structure here is just encouraging low effort inflammatory posts on throwaway on controversial topics instead of long posts on real account that get downvoted to oblivion anyway. I might even get downvoted to oblivion for simply having some empathy to their position regardless of how politely I wrote this.

pcdoodle 4y ago

Bill spends hundreds of millions on personal PR, what you are seeing could be related in some way.