He is easily one of the least bullshit-y sources when it comes to handling of COVID. But then there's this right in the middle of the interview: "And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger]". Quite literally, encrypted communication should be illegal and the government should read everyone's private messages. What motivates a statement like this?
What's frustrating about this question is that it (inevitably!) commands the top of the HN thread with a discussion of the least interesting thing in the article. It's an article about COVID and Facebook, and here we're recapitulating the end-to-end encryption debate for the 8-zillionth time.
I would argue that this statement from Bill is the most interesting. This statement shows Bill Gates, someone who has influence on legislatures, making a statement against encryption.
It remains interesting that the various powers that be continuously want to take away what little privacy we 99% have. They can't imagine a world where normal people can exist without their oversight. This includes most billionaires and elected officials. I am glad he is contributing his billions to helping solve covid and other global disasters but these little clips can be telling about the individual's belief and to always realize they have many sides to their character.
Bill Gates said something stupid and people are talking about it. His phrasing is what I expect an old person who doesn't have decades of industry pioneering experience in technology to say. So weird.
Point is, who cares what else he has to say if he says stuff like this? He's as much an expert on technology as he is on pathology, so if his opinions on technology are bad... well you get the point.
In defense of the OP, fair balance: a counter complaint
What is frustrating about this comment is that it inevitably commands the top of the HN thread, "for the 8-zillionth time", because its author's moniker automatically attracts "upvotes" due its familiarity, not because the comment is the most interesting.
That said, this comment is probably worthy of being at the top since the E2E debate is indeed a tired one and that sentiment probably has many sympathisers. However, as someone else pointed out, Gates brought this up, not HN. And it does directly relate to discussions about COVID on Facebook (WhatsApp) and the ability to censor them. Of course, there is also the argument that newcomers to HN will not know all the past discussions of E2E, nor are they expected to read them before commenting. We regularly see HN re-post items that have previously been submitted, re-opening discussions that are old hat, inviting us to re-hash them.
While some readers may grow tired of seeing the same topics discussed over and over again, other readers may grow tired of seeing the same usernames at the top of so many threads, over and over again, no matter what their comments.
This is one of the reasons for which I proposed that HN, by default, display discussions collapsed down to first branches. Just show the text for the first branches and collapse their corresponding conversations. Readers would only expand branches they find relevant or interesting and comment within them.
You could take this one step further and only show the first two lines (or n characters) of first branch comments. This would force a style where authors would have to provide a two line summary of their comment (if it is a first branch comment) in order to facilitate scanning. With this approach the list of first branches would almost look like the HN home page, where you can quickly scan the short titles and expand topics of interest.
To address your comment directly, if the inevitable makes it to the top of the first branch list it will be easy to scan other first branches on the same page without having to scroll or take any action. This might promote participation in other threads within the conversation and maybe even the bubbling-up of more "worthy" contenders for the top first branch.
HN is as much of an echo chamber as any other internet forum. 90% of the time you can predict in advance what the top-voted comment is going to be. Most of the time it will be some pointless quibbling about how the subject line technically isn't correct somehow. The rest of the time it'll be about one of the three or four hobby horses of HN. "I don't use social media", "WFH has no flaws", "whiteboard interviews are worse than waterboarding", etc.
Was puzzled by Gates' statement there. I didn't catch how the 'demon sperm doctors' video was related to encryption.
Rather the very difficult and important issue, how do you stop someone with 80 million followers from spreading lies and large numbers of people believing them, and who determines what are facts and what are lies. By Facebook, Twitter, etc.. removing Trump's posts for instance, aren't they taking upon themselves the authority of what's true and what isn't?
I have to believe the only answer is something they call freedom of speech. You can say whatever the hell you want publicly. I'm appalled by the fact the highest authority in the world retweeted the sperm doctors video as well, but I'm not so comfortable with FB, Twitter, etc. deciding for me what is true and not, or worth me reading, either.
So, the encryption issue doesn't apply here. It's a serious issue, but separate. The problem is not that encrypted lies can be sent. The lies that reach 1000 people aren't the problem. The problem is the unencrypted lies that REACH 80 million+ people.
Perhaps all top level comments could have a subject or title. It would be as if they were, themselves, submissions.
This is one of the things Slashdot did rather well with its categorization and ratings, though if that system were used then I’m sure everything would just be rated +5 Insightful with little signal over the noise.
Yea, I feel bad about this tangent. I actually enjoyed the article, I just got annoyed about what I felt was a mischaracterization of the entire piece, leading to that mischaracterization dominating the discussion, I'm going to upvote the next comment..
I don't think he is saying that encrypted communication should be illegal. He's saying that spreading lies through encrypted channels should be stopped. It would not be hard for WhatsApp to prevent people from spreading bogus videos, because they have access to the unencrypted information before and after sending. So either preventing people from sharing misinformation or preventing people from reading the misinformation. That's separate from the argument about whether or not it's a good thing (I wouldn't see a problem with it personally).
You know, Snopes has said that running a fact checking organisation is incredibly difficult. It's easy to see why, you have to:
1) decide what the definition of truth is
2) differentiate between subjectivity and objectivity
3) differentiate between misleading and outright incorrect
4) investigate every piece of media thoroughly
5) avoid bias
6) peer review
7) correct any mistakes
And this list is just off the top of my head.
So what bill gates is saying is that you have to do all this at a scale of 1 billion users, all controlled roughly by a few centralised organisations. I think Bill's words are still kind of stupid even with context. The way to fight all of these problems has always been education, and social welfare, and things the government should ACTUALLY be doing, not vetting encryption schemes.
You'd think given the amount of time he's spent working on Coronavirus that he might see the distinction between treating the symptoms and treating the cause, so to speak.
I've yet to see anyone provide any kind of evidence that suggests censorship changes people's minds about conspiracies - if anything it seems to be doing exactly the opposite.
> It would not be hard for WhatsApp to prevent people from spreading bogus videos
The problem is there’s no agreed upon definition for what’s “bogus”. A while ago someone commented here with a list of statements ranging from obviously false obviously true to show how hard the problem is, I wish I could find it.
Several commenters point out end-to-end encryption would prevent filtering or tagging messages.
But that's not true. The message analysis could be done at either endpoint without violating privacy.
Tagging (or removing) a message before you send/forward it, or after you receive it, with "the central message of this comment has been tagged as "probably a hoax" by hoaxtracker.com; check out this CDC notice <here> to learn more".
<here> does not need to be a URL which reveals much other than your general interest in the subject. But if that seems too revealing, it could already be already available as part of the endpoint's filtering data and readable locally.
Lots of people forward (retweet), or write a little something before resharing what is false or misleading information, not realising they're doing so. I would not be surprised if getting those tags, rarely enough to stand out, before they send the message would cause some people to hesitate and check/think a bit more before sending. Maybe rephrase their attached comment into a question rather than confident outrage.
Technically this is not much different from privacy-preserving spam filtering.
The main purpose of E2EE communication between willing participants is that the content of the communication is not checked, inspected, scanned, questioned, sampled, matched, filtered, modified, blocked, altered, or otherwise interfered with in any way whatsoever except that which is explicitly configured and consented to by a party to the conversation. (eg. anti-virus, anti-spam, group membership, etc)
That means no control of communication by the endpoint software either directly or indirectly between willing senders and recipients regardless of justification, and especially on the basis of whether or not data send from a willing sender to a willing receipient represents the "truth". The endpoint software vendor has no standing to judge that unless it's an opt-in anti-spam type feature.
It would indeed be very hard, if WhatsApp's own claim that messages are encrypted end-to-end is true. Either way (and I disagree that this should be a separate discussion) all methods of global speech control are eventually used for evil.
"It would be hard for WhatsApp to prevent people from spreading bogus videos, because they have access to the unencrypted information before and after sending."
Facebook/WhatsApp claims WhatsApp messages are "end-to-end" encypted. For example, here
And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger].
Note the []? Was this added in by Medium? Gates as an edit after a read-and-OK-to-release? Did Gates have editorial input?
Regardless, I believe [] means 'edited afterwards for clarity'. But by whom?
Yet in this case, there was no hatred of encryption, but picked quotes where he suggested that in one case, if you have the means, the government should be aided .. eg, a murderer.
There was another article on hackernews, where many lamented how much the media just spins, takes quotes out of context, basically does whatever it wants to. I wonder, how much of this are we seeing here?
(Note, Gates could very much be for back-doored encryption, but my point is, I don't think it's a clear position due to this medium article.. where that stances was in [] and added by someone after...)
The POTUS said CNN is fake news, hundreds of times. So, as you say, people should be prevented from sharing and reading it?! There's no problem with that?!
The very first item on the USA Bill of Rights isn't important?
If we extend this line of thinking, where does it lead?
The goal seems to be removing easy access to communications where governments can't listen for signs of dangerous behavior. But individuals can write custom software. Is there a stage in this arms race where one would need company/nation-state level resources to communicate in private?
Is there a potential future in which every piece of end-user software can't run without being signed by the government and is enforced at the CPU level? I'd hate to think this is even possible, but my (limited) understanding of secure enclaves makes me think there's a chance.
Quick point: the entire controversial/nuanced part of that statement happened in the summary/paraphrase brackets, not his own words.
If you're sitting here going, "gosh, I wonder why someone that well-informed would say that?!", I'd point out that you don't actually know the full detail of what he said.
This is just Gates venting out, dude is sooo frustrated. Imagine doing as much as he did and still getting horseshit accusations about putting chips into people's bodies or whatever new nonsense they will come up in 6 months.
I agree, but Gates has to know that on balance e2e encryption is better than not. I too feel the same frustration to a much lesser degree when talking to family members.
He doesn't seem to realise however that he's making this far worse.
Literally a core part of the Gates/COVID conspiracy theories goes like this:
"Bill Gates want to track everyone and is using a COVID vaccine as a trojan horse to do it"
Then he goes and says, gee, maybe it shouldn't be possible to say things Bill Gates doesn't like and the way to implement this is to ensure tech firms can monitor and track everything everyone is saying.
He's basically giving his critics an intellectual ammo dump with this interview. Dude doesn't seem self-aware, at all.
That was my take too. Him being frustrated at the problem. Sort of like when Obama rolls his eyes when someone makes a birther joke.
I personally think the solution isn't to make it harder to share lies, but easier to share the truth. Sharing the truth is actually extremely labor intensive.
He's thinking from a pragmatic, utilitarian mindset. He has no principles surrounding privacy. If it has to be sacrificed to get the job done that's fine in his mind as long as it's a net positive.
There's a lot to unpack in that quote and much of it is up to our interpretation.
I feel that the following statements could both be true.
1. Social media platforms should be able to monitor what content users are sharing on these platforms. Therefore these platforms maybe shouldn't have end-to-end encryption.
2. People need to have access to encryption for their own usage outside of social media platforms.
Where this might get tricky is in decentralized platforms which nobody owns. But we don't need to deal with this right now because it's not yet a problem. This will be a cat and mouse game always.
EDIT: Points 1 and 2 aren't necessarily my beliefs. I haven't put enough thought and research into it to have a more fully formed belief. These points are just my interpretation of what Gates could be saying. The context of encryption is in these platforms. He's not attacking encryption in general. Though other sources may reveal more information which could change my interpretation.
>>> Social media platforms should be able to monitor what content users are sharing on these platforms.
Then you’re not a platform, you are a publisher and should be held accountable for what you choose to publish. A platform is literally that: a platform for use by users as they see intended. I’m not talking about trolls, spammers, hackers and those who post illegal content. When platforms move down to editorialize content, they cease to be defined as a platform.
Kinda rich he spearheaded his own control of what people do with his bytes to now say others can't. I wish it wasn't true that enabling something like this would compromise all of our collective security.
Problem (lie, fraud, child pornography) is real. IMHO, Bill is not proposing a solution to disable encryption. He is simply saying that government should not allow these activities encrypted. Industry, governments, academics should figure out the best solution.
He's a billionaire. The government defends his billions from being redistributed by angry dying people. He doesn't want potential revolutionaries to be able to communicate easily.
This is the right answer. HN likes to think of Bill Gates as a techophile because that’s where he started, but today he’s foremost a billionaire with more to lose than to gain.
Because they know what awaits them if they try to leave the "chosen path" (a path that also helps them remain billionaires, so not that difficult a moral compromise to make). See Joseph Nacchio [1]:
> Joseph P. Nacchio is an American executive who was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Qwest Communications International from 1997 to 2002. Nacchio was convicted of insider trading during his time heading Qwest. He claimed in court, with documentation, that his was the only company to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass surveillance demanded by the NSA which began prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Perhaps you should take pause and reflect on the broader issue Gates is talking about.
Social media is destroying our society in front of our eyes. Identifying how and why that is happening is something that matters too. The hardline techie position that all communications must be completely encrypted with obfuscated origins is a position whose consequences are not fully understood.
"As someone who has built your life on science and logic, I'm curious what you think when you see so many people signing onto this anti-science view of the world.
Well, strangely, I'm involved in almost everything that anti-science is fighting. I'm involved with climate change, GMOs, and vaccines. The IRONY [emphasis added] is that it's DIGITAL [emphasis added] social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, "OK, there's just an evil person, and that explains all of this."
Well, you're friends with Mark Zuckerberg. Have you talked to him about this?
After I said this publicly, he sent me mail. I like Mark, I think he's got very good values, but he and I do disagree on the trade-offs involved there. The lies are so titillating you have to be able to see them and at least slow them down."
Gates has a reason to be against the spreading of information on social media because recently he became a target of conspiracy theories spread on social media.
If encryption is an imediment to stoping people from spreading theories about him, then he obviously has a reason to be against encryption when used to spread these theories.
Maybe what is more interesting is when he uses the word irony right before he states he is against encryption.
What does he mean?
What is ironic about the fact that it is "digital social media" that allows "oversimplistic explanation[s]"?
HN readers can probably make better guesses than me. Disgreement with the guesses I make is expected.
For example, perhaps it is ironic because:
He has been such a strong proponent of using computers for anything and everything.
Gates was initially a skeptic of the internet, but later believed Microsoft's "internet strategy" was of primary importance. This led to projects like Internet Explorer and MSN. The company is now preparing to spend billions to acquire a social media company.
In amassing the fortune that allows him to pursue these philanthropic causes he and his company presented countless titillating, oversimplistic explanations of the value of using computers for seemingly anything. He wanted us to believe that the computer (running Windows of course) was the great enabler.
I have no idea what he meant and I am grasping at straws.
Where did he say government should read everyone's private messages? Governments can access my security box at the bank. That is different from governments rifling through it all the time.
In practice there is no scalable way for the government to check everyone's security box every second. However, it is possible for them to scan every message sent in real time and past leaks have shown that they will if given the opportunity.
Just to make it clear, this seems very much like Gates to me as an Indian. He has bank rolled several very problematic studies in India in collusion with the fascist (at least super right wing) government, including the very controversial biometric national ID (AADHAAR) project. They were quite literally holding newborns hostages[1].
If you want to completely eradicate crime one way to do it would be to completely eradicate privacy.
Would you sacrifice your privacy if it could eliminate child pornography? The theory is hard to say no to, but in practice that kind of power has never worked out. If we want to retain privacy we have to accept some amount of crime going unnoticed.
Such a premise begs the question that those given the power would sincerely use it to shutdown child exploitation and other crime.
It seems to me that there are many instances where child exploitation is ignored when it is politically convenient such that giving up our privacy wouldn't be of benefit to society, and would be largely to our detriment.
You somehow imply that it's impossible to get rid of crime without getting rid of privacy which is an absurd claim.
Finally if you take a look at pure math - most of worlds suffering, evil and death is inflicted by world's governments. You'd put your trust in that over individuals?
This is a general debate either for or against more government. It’s why the libertarian movement is closely related to open source, free speech, encryption and bitcoin.
Not sure how one could make such an ill-considered comment. It is always useful to ask 'cui bono?'. Who benefits the most from e2e? Is it the individual? Or is it Facebook and friends, who can use it to drastically lower content moderation costs, legal liability and the general smell from transmitting harmful content, while making a fortune. To me, they are doing what all 'great' capitalist enterprises manage to do, which is make someone else pay for the negative externalities of their business. For other examples see the fossil fuel industry, processed food, and the grandaddy of them all, big tobacco. Gates is not swallowing the koolaid.
The desire to own all the information to own the whole world.
And it's obvious that this is not "his" statement, but a statement from the mouth of a puppet who is absolutely dependent on spreading the agenda in order to maintain his status quo of an "independent billionaire"
Are you familiar with how much child pornography has ballooned from social media? I hadn’t until I listened to this podcast with NYT investigative journalist. Worth considering how serious on of the trade offs are... https://samharris.org/podcasts/213-worst-epidemic/
So, let's walk through this. You have to either have a bunch of people look at child pornography and vet out all that content, or train a neural network on gigabytes worth of child pornography. Either way you want to fight child pornography by collecting and viewing tons and tons of it, as opposed to, I don't know, preventing children from being sex trafficked? Not letting children marry adults?
The biggest porn website on the planet still has trouble solving this problem. Everyone in this thread including bill gates has assumed that this is an easy one to solve.
This is so asinine, especially because bill lumped this problem in with fact checking, which is in a completely different realm of problems.
Even on Covid. He warned in Feb that covid could result in 10 millions deaths in Africa, when we knew already from the Chinese numbers that the demographics of covid deaths was massively skewed toward 70yo+, and Africa has a very young population. I classify him in the FUD spreading category.
It wasn't about the demographic, but about the fact that their healthcare system would get overloaded, which impacts a lot of treatments for everybody else.
Also the problem with predictions of epidemic is that if you actually do a better job than expected at confinement / protection measures, then predictions are meaningless. You "could have" a lot of bad things happen, but once you do things right, they disappear. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have done those things, it just means that people have been warned properly. He said, if they get hit severely, impact would be much bigger than in the west. He didn't say the 10 million was a done deal.
Why not? Africa has almost 1.3 billion people. The notion 0.8% could die from a pandemic which, let loose, can infect virtually everyone and has a 1% casualty rate is not so strange. Obviously measures were taken, but it's not so weird to talk about a scenario in which no measures are taken, in February when many countries had no clue what was coming to them and didn't take it too seriously yet.
Is this the quote you based your classification on? Seems like he is talking generally about the threat of a pandemic causing 10 million or more deaths. He also mentions Asia.
"This is a huge challenge, we’ve always known the potential for a naturally caused, or intentionally caused, pandemic is one if the few things that could disrupt health systems and economies and cause more than 10 million excess deaths.
This could be particularly if it spreads in areas like sub-Saharan Africa and some Asia, it could be very very dramatic.
We’re doing the constant science to provide the tools to do the diagnosis to provide vaccines, to provide therapeutics and hopefully contain this epidemic, but it’s potentially a very bad situation."
For Africa it's just "one more disease" that probably won't even show up much in mortality numbers because there's just so many other slow disasters at the same time.
Bill Gates is a public health expert. He has been working on these problems with some of the smartest minds in the field for decades now. How long does someone need to be working on a problem before they're worthy of being a "go to source", in your opinion?
Well anyone who has extensively published novel research that has altered best practise in the field for the better and has a track record of being sensible, well-reasoned, logical, has an understanding of how humans organise not just the natural world and has wonderful command of spoken and written expression would be near the top of the wish-list.
It's not how long it took that person to demonstrate this. It's that Gates kinda hasn't really done it.
He's far from terrible but he gets pretty low scores on most of those attributes. He's not going to be listened to if he didn't bring the money. His experience in making microsoft a juggernaut in the 80s and 90s is not super-relevant here but that's why he's being held up as an "authority." That position of authority is one he seems very happy to hold and use as a pulpit.
Is it deserved at all? Maybe it is. He did bring the money to a lot of programs and I believe he is even bankrolling the WHO nowadays (worthwhile after their multiple screwups that continue? I don't know. Maybe it is and a vital service he's performed there). Gates an expert? Hmm. Don't think he's really demonstrated that conclusively. He'd use his position to get advice from one or more, one would think.
To be clear. More power to him giving his vast wealth away to try and make the world better in tangible ways. You can't possibly spend more than $100m in your life on consumption even if you're totally nuts. Go for immortality. Do it in a way that's kinda good. Go Bill! I pray your good intentions don't pave a road you don't want built as I do everyone's good intentions, including my own.
Bill Gates certainly doesn’t have the credentials of a public health expert. His work with health experts has extended to funding and choosing what problems to solve.
You’d presume he’s learned a fair amount about it over the years. But I’ve learned a fair amount about accountancy through my years of working with corporate accountants. I’m definitely not an accountancy expert though.
What qualifications do you imagine he has? What significant work do you believe he has personally contributed to?
Like it or not, he's become a highly controversial figure for a large fraction of the population, particularly within the societies that his foundation works. In my opinion, they'd do good to pick a figure whose name is less tarnished if they want the message to be more broadly accepted.
Yes, it's really weird, also that he is actually supporting the WHO financially. But here's the reality: U.S. doesn't spend enough to WHO (in fact now they even want to leave), so he gives them money - which is actually possible for everyone. Also Bill Gates wasn't the only "Cassandra", practically every popular science magazine (and probably also HN) has written about the possibility of a future pandemic since years. And yet, Government did nothing. Actually in Germany there were even pandemic simulations about 10 years ago, showing how bad Germany is prepared. Still, nothing was done to improve that.
I think the summary is: this is really odd but it is even more odd how governments are unable to work on long-term topics unless shit hits the fan.
> this is really odd but it is even more odd how governments are unable to work on long-term topics unless shit hits the fan.
Not so odd. This is a common human behavior. We humans are very slow in responding to low probability but high impact events, especially if they require coordination.
E.g. upcoming climate disaster ("climate change" is a euphemism at this point), or nuclear weapons stockpile and the military systems which are effectively a dooms-day device for humanity.
At a smaller scale, various preventable accidents like Beirut explosions or most industrial accidents.
Ironically, a well functioning bureaucracy is one of the best answers, as you can see from Taiwan or South Korea's preparedness and response to COVID pandemic.
> I think the summary is: this is really odd but it is even more odd how governments are unable to work on long-term topics unless shit hits the fan.
This is just because there is no incentive for any politician. It's just like how security is at the bottom of the budget list for most IT companies. Unless we have a framework where people are accountable, nothing will change.
That’s not true. GWB took it very seriously and put a plan in place. Obama modernized the plan. Trump is the one who ignored his predecessors and set the stage for the mess we are in.
For a couple of reasons; Gates is well known and will draw more visibility. He’s a well trained public speaker. He knows enough about the subject matter to communicate it effectively. Also, a short interview probably isn’t long enough for someone with deep subject knowledge to scratch the surface.
I'm not a fan of Gates, but he's clearly a smart person. Think of him as a sort of CEO of the organization that coordinates lots of the work done by the "really smart people", a CEO smart enough to be able to give Levy a better summary than Levy would come up with himself if he spoke to 10 actual experts.
He's proven to be reliable over decades. That's the main reason, I think. There was a small reason to talk to him about public health at first, but over time it's grown into a huge reason.
The question remains, is what is he reliable at? Why do I and so many others want to listen to him more over the years? I think it's because of the depth and breadth of issues he discusses. It's a sweet spot for me, between talking in too much depth and not enough depth.
I think he’s like a bored nerd tremendous in managing Windows and using web browsers.
So I’d think his accounts would be as easy and correct as some wiki articles or better, and at the same time would sound “irrelevant” to the public for the lack of emotional components to it.
An excellent question that shouldn't be downvoted. Why is Bill Gates "the guy?" Don't read that in a conspiratorial sense, just in a rational "can someone explain this to me" sense.
He has spent a large amount of time coordinating and strategizing health care interventions in multiple countries over the last couple of decades. Seems like he would be in a very good position to explain this stuff to the public.
His foundation has been in the health space since it's inception. He's very hands on, and consumes and synthesizes health knowledge, which he's been doing for a long time. He has a broad view of many of the factors that go into vaccines, treatments, societal impact, etc. I've never seen him stumped or give a political non-answer on any of the interviews he's been given. I consider him an authority on the topic.
He has broad experiencing in tackling infectious diseases through methods like vaccination & propaganda and he also has doubtless expertise in computers. He has long before COVID frequently been the target of conspiracy theories of him vaccinating people for nefarious purposes.
Thus questions regarding a contemporary infectious disease potentially treated by a disease causing odd politicized conspiratorial behavior on social media is right up his wheelhouse and he's a well known public speaker. There are many epidemiologists you could hear from, and most people have heard from them repeatedly, but Gates offers a fresh perspective due to his fairly unique experience and perspective.
Because he's not just randomly throwing money around and has a well earned reputation for getting a decent return on his investments: he tends to spend money on things that work. So given that he's actively spending money and getting results, his perspective on what things need to be invested in and why is very interesting.
There are plenty of rich philanthropists but very few with Gates's level of understanding and ability to make good policy choices.
Managing the foundation as a business with the goal of maximizing return on investment is precisely one of the criticism leveled at Gates. Note that return on investment refers to financial return, not some abstract notion about improving the world.
Like on WHO? The organization that lied for months about the potentiality of the covid to become a pandemic and that is excluding on political ground the country that handle best the virus (Taiwan). By still sponsoring this China’s lying organization, Bill Gates lost credibility in my eyes.
There are many other people interviewed about Covid and other public health issues. But until recently almost all of the experts were essentially unknown to the general population. Gates is simply a very widely known name, and due to the Gates Foundation actually somewhat relevant to the topic.
I could very well be that his interviews attract far more attention than interviews with experts, but you can't really compensate for that kind of name recognition.
Rich elites have a long history of oversized influence on public policy in the US. I'm not sure why exactly this is happening, but I think it's at least partly because of the relatively low involvement of the government in various social topics.
If you think about it, having public policy being at least partially dictated by unelected and unaccountable individuals is not a good place to be.
Hasan Minhaj had an episode on the Patriot Act about this topic and how:
a) the huge sums of money and foundations these billionaires manage have less of an impact than one would think because of the staggered way that the money is handed out, organizational bureaucracy and the fact that most problems that they're trying to tackle don't really lend themselves to being quashed just by throwing money at them. Many pursue such philanthropy also in part to clean up their public image and as a tax reduction strategy.
b) those huge sums distort the domains that they are injected in and could in some cases cause harm. The Gates Foundation is known for favoring high-impact project and sucking the air out of the room for other initiatives for example.
I guess for the general U.S audience having a well known figure, who has been active in the public health space for some years now through his foundations, speaking as an authority on the ongoing crisis makes sense, giving the lack of ongoing leadership in that country.
However for someone living in a western European country it would not be received very well if a business person, even one with such a big philanthropic side to them, would become the go to authority on public health and wellbeing during this time. For that only be an actually trained and experienced professional can be turned to.
If you can listen to his talk and tell us what part of what he said is wrong then I think you will have a point. Anyone can talk about anything and certainly he can talk about what he and his organizations are working on and what they plan to do about various public health issues.
"So why not talk to the really smart people he hired?"
There is definitely a billionaire cult going on these days. I don't know when it started but I see more and more headlines "billionaire does X", "billionaire says Y". Somehow being a billionaire gives you credibility on everything you do or say.
Like it or not money is influence. It’s even more amplified when you have an incompetent government. It would be great if Trump hadn’t bungled the entire response, then maybe BG would just be another person behind the scenes helping with funding.
I don’t understand what your motivation is for saying this. Why do you think Bill is not to be asked these questions? Do you think he would twist or misrepresent facts? Do you think somehow funding so much research makes him untrustworthy?
Oh, they can certainly ask Bill these questions, but I would say there are a ton of people who have far more expertise in infectious diseases than him.
If they were asking him about funding these efforts, then yeah, he’d be the go to guy.
Don't forget he gave a TED talk warning the world about the next pandemic. And obviously he knows a thing or two about high-level issues dealing with epidemics (which extend beyond just the medicine). Why would they just ignore him?
But why listen to him either? You could have talked to any disease expert over the last few decades and they would have told you that a pandemic will be coming and that we aren't prepared.
I’ve heard my own CEO try explain something technical and it’s clear they don’t really understand it (and why should they? That’s why they hired experts).
In this article Bill says “most of the Covid tests are garbage”. That seems like a technical statement that should come from someone who is an expert in testing.
If the question was “what do you think the most promising Covid treatments are?” that’s a good question for Bill, assuming he’s involved in the funding decisions (maybe he’s not?).
The "smartest" (most accomplished?) experts within a field will often disagree with each other - sometimes on very important topics. I've encountered this first-hand. It's more common in certain fields than others, but I've seen at least a little bit of it almost everywhere. I can see value in an independent third-party from outside the field who brings experts together, listens to their best advice, and then decides what course to recommend.
Indeed, if you look at what he was saying at the end of February, there was no concern about the way the U.S. was handling the pandemic. Look at what he wrote on February 28th[1] - his recommendations for the current pandemic are for richer countries to assist poorer countries, and for a vaccine to be made.
If someone like Gates sounded the alarm on the poor way the U.S. was responding, it might have made a difference, but he did no such thing. Like most of the leadership in the U.S., he seemed to have a big blind spot with regards to how bad things could get in America. Some people were sounding the alarm early on (take a look at the last minute of this video[2] for an example), but were mostly ignored.
I mean we have other unelected experts leading the pandemic response (eg Fauci) so does he need to go?
Or is it just about the wealth?
Bill Gates is there because his foundation is responsible for helping to eradicate diseases and coordinate pandemic responses, so without his wealth he certainly has experience in this field.
He points out that a standard nasal swab test is as accurate as a nasopharyngeal (deep) swab. This is readily available from labcorp, can be done at home, and the results are reasonably quick, within 48 hrs. It’s covered by insurance and includes overnight fedex shipping.
> There’s this thing where the health worker jams the deep turbinate, in the back of your nose, which actually hurts and makes you sneeze on the healthy worker. We showed that the quality of the results can be equivalent if you just put a self-test in the tip of your nose with a cotton swab.
I would love to see someone let Bill talk about covid, the implications of economic damage and increased debt over the next 1-2 years, the inequality which covid magnifies, and future methods of prevention - for an hour or two, with a good host.
This interview is good but barely scratches the surface.
edit: I've just found a recent interview - while still high level, it's a bit more detailed. However, the comments section reads like 4chan, all of the top comments are trolls. What's going on? When/how did it become a thing to hate on Gates for his efforts to eradicate diseases?
>And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger].
WOW. Why would someone in the tech industry like Gates be anti-encryption for the public? The only argument I can think of against it is "You have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide"
Considering encrypted messages have to both be encrypted and decrypted, I don't think his statement is necessarily against encrypted. I assumed he meant preventing the sending of known materials like that and / or the opening of it (which wouldn't interfere with end-to-end encryption at all).
Would it be a map of unacceptable things, or an on device model like GPT3? Would you allow someone to type the offending thing and just disable the send button, or would you block it at the keyup event?
I don't see any way this could be implemented without kissing freedom goodbye.
I like the other commenter's take that this idea was just a bit out of exasperation.
He's not some random out of touch congressman though, he personally should know better than to make such an unspecific attack on encryption. The way he said it, everyone will hear that he wants the government to limit encryption which essentially means to ban it.
And they wouldn't be wrong. If the same thing came out of someone else's mouth I assume you wouldn't be seeking out an unreasonably charitable explanation like this.
And if such a plan was introduced by Trump you probably wouldn't even think of this charitable version as a good plan at all because at the end of the day, things like censorship and mass surveillance are tools of oppression in the wrong hands, and you have no control whose hands it will end up in once it's normalized.
Would you consider it an acceptable edge case to privacy/decryption to allow child sexual abuse prosecutors to unlock a suspect's phone which was suspected to contain GB of evidence of abuse?
he said it right there. he thinks child trafficking and misinformation outweigh privacy. i disagree with him but no reason to concoct an argument when there’s one there
> And that makes me feel like, for the rich world, we should largely be able to end this thing by the end of 2021, and for the world at large by the end of 2022. That is only because of the scale of the innovation that’s taking place. Now whenever we get this done, we will have lost many years in malaria and polio and HIV and the indebtedness of countries of all sizes and instability.
What does he mean by that ? That research regarding HIV, malaria and polio is slowing down ? Or that there'll be a rise in HIV/malaria/polio cases ?
A quick, cheap, non-invasive test that is less accurate (in the direction of more false positives) would be far more effective than a more accurate but slow, expensive, and intrusive test.
Source? Governments are quick to brag but the reality in many places is that capacity is overwhelmed and it still takes several days to get results. That might be better than weeks in the US, but it's not black and white.
I strongly recommend watching the impromptu interview Bill Gates gave back in the 90s while visiting the Wired office, for gaining some valuable perspective on his thinking, and how comically wrong he's been before.
My internet is too flaky here at the moment to verify, but I believe this is the URL:
Readit News
Someone like Gates pushing for the end of private speech at scale is always going to be of interest to the HN crowd.
Point is, who cares what else he has to say if he says stuff like this? He's as much an expert on technology as he is on pathology, so if his opinions on technology are bad... well you get the point.
What is frustrating about this comment is that it inevitably commands the top of the HN thread, "for the 8-zillionth time", because its author's moniker automatically attracts "upvotes" due its familiarity, not because the comment is the most interesting.
That said, this comment is probably worthy of being at the top since the E2E debate is indeed a tired one and that sentiment probably has many sympathisers. However, as someone else pointed out, Gates brought this up, not HN. And it does directly relate to discussions about COVID on Facebook (WhatsApp) and the ability to censor them. Of course, there is also the argument that newcomers to HN will not know all the past discussions of E2E, nor are they expected to read them before commenting. We regularly see HN re-post items that have previously been submitted, re-opening discussions that are old hat, inviting us to re-hash them.
While some readers may grow tired of seeing the same topics discussed over and over again, other readers may grow tired of seeing the same usernames at the top of so many threads, over and over again, no matter what their comments.
This is one of the reasons for which I proposed that HN, by default, display discussions collapsed down to first branches. Just show the text for the first branches and collapse their corresponding conversations. Readers would only expand branches they find relevant or interesting and comment within them.
You could take this one step further and only show the first two lines (or n characters) of first branch comments. This would force a style where authors would have to provide a two line summary of their comment (if it is a first branch comment) in order to facilitate scanning. With this approach the list of first branches would almost look like the HN home page, where you can quickly scan the short titles and expand topics of interest.
To address your comment directly, if the inevitable makes it to the top of the first branch list it will be easy to scan other first branches on the same page without having to scroll or take any action. This might promote participation in other threads within the conversation and maybe even the bubbling-up of more "worthy" contenders for the top first branch.
Rather the very difficult and important issue, how do you stop someone with 80 million followers from spreading lies and large numbers of people believing them, and who determines what are facts and what are lies. By Facebook, Twitter, etc.. removing Trump's posts for instance, aren't they taking upon themselves the authority of what's true and what isn't?
I have to believe the only answer is something they call freedom of speech. You can say whatever the hell you want publicly. I'm appalled by the fact the highest authority in the world retweeted the sperm doctors video as well, but I'm not so comfortable with FB, Twitter, etc. deciding for me what is true and not, or worth me reading, either.
So, the encryption issue doesn't apply here. It's a serious issue, but separate. The problem is not that encrypted lies can be sent. The lies that reach 1000 people aren't the problem. The problem is the unencrypted lies that REACH 80 million+ people.
Something I've wished for; hacker news only with top level comments
This is one of the things Slashdot did rather well with its categorization and ratings, though if that system were used then I’m sure everything would just be rated +5 Insightful with little signal over the noise.
1) decide what the definition of truth is
2) differentiate between subjectivity and objectivity
3) differentiate between misleading and outright incorrect
4) investigate every piece of media thoroughly
5) avoid bias
6) peer review
7) correct any mistakes
And this list is just off the top of my head.
So what bill gates is saying is that you have to do all this at a scale of 1 billion users, all controlled roughly by a few centralised organisations. I think Bill's words are still kind of stupid even with context. The way to fight all of these problems has always been education, and social welfare, and things the government should ACTUALLY be doing, not vetting encryption schemes.
I've yet to see anyone provide any kind of evidence that suggests censorship changes people's minds about conspiracies - if anything it seems to be doing exactly the opposite.
The problem is there’s no agreed upon definition for what’s “bogus”. A while ago someone commented here with a list of statements ranging from obviously false obviously true to show how hard the problem is, I wish I could find it.
Several commenters point out end-to-end encryption would prevent filtering or tagging messages.
But that's not true. The message analysis could be done at either endpoint without violating privacy.
Tagging (or removing) a message before you send/forward it, or after you receive it, with "the central message of this comment has been tagged as "probably a hoax" by hoaxtracker.com; check out this CDC notice <here> to learn more".
<here> does not need to be a URL which reveals much other than your general interest in the subject. But if that seems too revealing, it could already be already available as part of the endpoint's filtering data and readable locally.
Lots of people forward (retweet), or write a little something before resharing what is false or misleading information, not realising they're doing so. I would not be surprised if getting those tags, rarely enough to stand out, before they send the message would cause some people to hesitate and check/think a bit more before sending. Maybe rephrase their attached comment into a question rather than confident outrage.
Technically this is not much different from privacy-preserving spam filtering.
That means no control of communication by the endpoint software either directly or indirectly between willing senders and recipients regardless of justification, and especially on the basis of whether or not data send from a willing sender to a willing receipient represents the "truth". The endpoint software vendor has no standing to judge that unless it's an opt-in anti-spam type feature.
Facebook/WhatsApp claims WhatsApp messages are "end-to-end" encypted. For example, here
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
Are the "end-to-end" encryption claims irrelevant if "they have access to the unecncypted information before and after sending"?
When I look at the medium article, I see this:
And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger].
Note the []? Was this added in by Medium? Gates as an edit after a read-and-OK-to-release? Did Gates have editorial input?
Regardless, I believe [] means 'edited afterwards for clarity'. But by whom?
I Googled, and found this:
https://wccftech.com/bill-gates-hate-encryption/
Yet in this case, there was no hatred of encryption, but picked quotes where he suggested that in one case, if you have the means, the government should be aided .. eg, a murderer.
There was another article on hackernews, where many lamented how much the media just spins, takes quotes out of context, basically does whatever it wants to. I wonder, how much of this are we seeing here?
(Note, Gates could very much be for back-doored encryption, but my point is, I don't think it's a clear position due to this medium article.. where that stances was in [] and added by someone after...)
Dead Comment
> (I wouldn't see a problem with it personally
The POTUS said CNN is fake news, hundreds of times. So, as you say, people should be prevented from sharing and reading it?! There's no problem with that?! The very first item on the USA Bill of Rights isn't important?
The goal seems to be removing easy access to communications where governments can't listen for signs of dangerous behavior. But individuals can write custom software. Is there a stage in this arms race where one would need company/nation-state level resources to communicate in private?
Is there a potential future in which every piece of end-user software can't run without being signed by the government and is enforced at the CPU level? I'd hate to think this is even possible, but my (limited) understanding of secure enclaves makes me think there's a chance.
Not for walled garden platforms. See also The Digital Imprimatur:
https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
If you're sitting here going, "gosh, I wonder why someone that well-informed would say that?!", I'd point out that you don't actually know the full detail of what he said.
He doesn't seem to realise however that he's making this far worse.
Literally a core part of the Gates/COVID conspiracy theories goes like this:
"Bill Gates want to track everyone and is using a COVID vaccine as a trojan horse to do it"
Then he goes and says, gee, maybe it shouldn't be possible to say things Bill Gates doesn't like and the way to implement this is to ensure tech firms can monitor and track everything everyone is saying.
He's basically giving his critics an intellectual ammo dump with this interview. Dude doesn't seem self-aware, at all.
I personally think the solution isn't to make it harder to share lies, but easier to share the truth. Sharing the truth is actually extremely labor intensive.
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I feel that the following statements could both be true.
1. Social media platforms should be able to monitor what content users are sharing on these platforms. Therefore these platforms maybe shouldn't have end-to-end encryption.
2. People need to have access to encryption for their own usage outside of social media platforms.
Where this might get tricky is in decentralized platforms which nobody owns. But we don't need to deal with this right now because it's not yet a problem. This will be a cat and mouse game always.
EDIT: Points 1 and 2 aren't necessarily my beliefs. I haven't put enough thought and research into it to have a more fully formed belief. These points are just my interpretation of what Gates could be saying. The context of encryption is in these platforms. He's not attacking encryption in general. Though other sources may reveal more information which could change my interpretation.
Then you’re not a platform, you are a publisher and should be held accountable for what you choose to publish. A platform is literally that: a platform for use by users as they see intended. I’m not talking about trolls, spammers, hackers and those who post illegal content. When platforms move down to editorialize content, they cease to be defined as a platform.
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Lie, fraud, child porn is real. Government should install 24-7 cameras in every private room of every citizen to curb all illegal activity.
Because billionaires don't need encryption to keep themselves safe. The billions take care of that just fine.
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> Joseph P. Nacchio is an American executive who was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Qwest Communications International from 1997 to 2002. Nacchio was convicted of insider trading during his time heading Qwest. He claimed in court, with documentation, that his was the only company to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass surveillance demanded by the NSA which began prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
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The simple explanation is that there exist people who in good faith disagree with you about encryption.
Social media is destroying our society in front of our eyes. Identifying how and why that is happening is something that matters too. The hardline techie position that all communications must be completely encrypted with obfuscated origins is a position whose consequences are not fully understood.
Well, strangely, I'm involved in almost everything that anti-science is fighting. I'm involved with climate change, GMOs, and vaccines. The IRONY [emphasis added] is that it's DIGITAL [emphasis added] social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, "OK, there's just an evil person, and that explains all of this."
Well, you're friends with Mark Zuckerberg. Have you talked to him about this?
After I said this publicly, he sent me mail. I like Mark, I think he's got very good values, but he and I do disagree on the trade-offs involved there. The lies are so titillating you have to be able to see them and at least slow them down."
Gates has a reason to be against the spreading of information on social media because recently he became a target of conspiracy theories spread on social media.
If encryption is an imediment to stoping people from spreading theories about him, then he obviously has a reason to be against encryption when used to spread these theories.
Maybe what is more interesting is when he uses the word irony right before he states he is against encryption.
What does he mean?
What is ironic about the fact that it is "digital social media" that allows "oversimplistic explanation[s]"?
HN readers can probably make better guesses than me. Disgreement with the guesses I make is expected.
For example, perhaps it is ironic because:
He has been such a strong proponent of using computers for anything and everything.
Gates was initially a skeptic of the internet, but later believed Microsoft's "internet strategy" was of primary importance. This led to projects like Internet Explorer and MSN. The company is now preparing to spend billions to acquire a social media company.
In amassing the fortune that allows him to pursue these philanthropic causes he and his company presented countless titillating, oversimplistic explanations of the value of using computers for seemingly anything. He wanted us to believe that the computer (running Windows of course) was the great enabler.
I have no idea what he meant and I am grasping at straws.
Also, sad to see the actual meaningful content of the article gotten less attention.
He is demonizing encryption. There are few options that logically follow that stance.
[1]: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/mps-largest-...
Would you sacrifice your privacy if it could eliminate child pornography? The theory is hard to say no to, but in practice that kind of power has never worked out. If we want to retain privacy we have to accept some amount of crime going unnoticed.
It seems to me that there are many instances where child exploitation is ignored when it is politically convenient such that giving up our privacy wouldn't be of benefit to society, and would be largely to our detriment.
Finally if you take a look at pure math - most of worlds suffering, evil and death is inflicted by world's governments. You'd put your trust in that over individuals?
Dead Comment
And it's obvious that this is not "his" statement, but a statement from the mouth of a puppet who is absolutely dependent on spreading the agenda in order to maintain his status quo of an "independent billionaire"
This is so asinine, especially because bill lumped this problem in with fact checking, which is in a completely different realm of problems.
It wasn't about the demographic, but about the fact that their healthcare system would get overloaded, which impacts a lot of treatments for everybody else.
Also the problem with predictions of epidemic is that if you actually do a better job than expected at confinement / protection measures, then predictions are meaningless. You "could have" a lot of bad things happen, but once you do things right, they disappear. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have done those things, it just means that people have been warned properly. He said, if they get hit severely, impact would be much bigger than in the west. He didn't say the 10 million was a done deal.
"This is a huge challenge, we’ve always known the potential for a naturally caused, or intentionally caused, pandemic is one if the few things that could disrupt health systems and economies and cause more than 10 million excess deaths.
This could be particularly if it spreads in areas like sub-Saharan Africa and some Asia, it could be very very dramatic.
We’re doing the constant science to provide the tools to do the diagnosis to provide vaccines, to provide therapeutics and hopefully contain this epidemic, but it’s potentially a very bad situation."
(found this here -> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/15/coronovirus-bill...)
His biggest contribution is money, which pays for really smart people to tackle these issues.
So why not talk to the really smart people he hired?
It's not how long it took that person to demonstrate this. It's that Gates kinda hasn't really done it.
He's far from terrible but he gets pretty low scores on most of those attributes. He's not going to be listened to if he didn't bring the money. His experience in making microsoft a juggernaut in the 80s and 90s is not super-relevant here but that's why he's being held up as an "authority." That position of authority is one he seems very happy to hold and use as a pulpit.
Is it deserved at all? Maybe it is. He did bring the money to a lot of programs and I believe he is even bankrolling the WHO nowadays (worthwhile after their multiple screwups that continue? I don't know. Maybe it is and a vital service he's performed there). Gates an expert? Hmm. Don't think he's really demonstrated that conclusively. He'd use his position to get advice from one or more, one would think.
To be clear. More power to him giving his vast wealth away to try and make the world better in tangible ways. You can't possibly spend more than $100m in your life on consumption even if you're totally nuts. Go for immortality. Do it in a way that's kinda good. Go Bill! I pray your good intentions don't pave a road you don't want built as I do everyone's good intentions, including my own.
You’d presume he’s learned a fair amount about it over the years. But I’ve learned a fair amount about accountancy through my years of working with corporate accountants. I’m definitely not an accountancy expert though.
What qualifications do you imagine he has? What significant work do you believe he has personally contributed to?
Dead Comment
Why get information thirdhand from the money guy?
I think the summary is: this is really odd but it is even more odd how governments are unable to work on long-term topics unless shit hits the fan.
Not so odd. This is a common human behavior. We humans are very slow in responding to low probability but high impact events, especially if they require coordination.
E.g. upcoming climate disaster ("climate change" is a euphemism at this point), or nuclear weapons stockpile and the military systems which are effectively a dooms-day device for humanity.
At a smaller scale, various preventable accidents like Beirut explosions or most industrial accidents.
Ironically, a well functioning bureaucracy is one of the best answers, as you can see from Taiwan or South Korea's preparedness and response to COVID pandemic.
This is just because there is no incentive for any politician. It's just like how security is at the bottom of the budget list for most IT companies. Unless we have a framework where people are accountable, nothing will change.
That’s not true. GWB took it very seriously and put a plan in place. Obama modernized the plan. Trump is the one who ignored his predecessors and set the stage for the mess we are in.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/how-whi...
Maybe it’s just the cynic in me, but it comes across as a bit of “billionaire worship”.
“He’s made lots of money, so he must be brilliant and I want to hear what brilliant people think about Covid.”
He's proven to be reliable over decades. That's the main reason, I think. There was a small reason to talk to him about public health at first, but over time it's grown into a huge reason.
The question remains, is what is he reliable at? Why do I and so many others want to listen to him more over the years? I think it's because of the depth and breadth of issues he discusses. It's a sweet spot for me, between talking in too much depth and not enough depth.
So I’d think his accounts would be as easy and correct as some wiki articles or better, and at the same time would sound “irrelevant” to the public for the lack of emotional components to it.
Thus questions regarding a contemporary infectious disease potentially treated by a disease causing odd politicized conspiratorial behavior on social media is right up his wheelhouse and he's a well known public speaker. There are many epidemiologists you could hear from, and most people have heard from them repeatedly, but Gates offers a fresh perspective due to his fairly unique experience and perspective.
Dead Comment
There are plenty of rich philanthropists but very few with Gates's level of understanding and ability to make good policy choices.
Like on WHO? The organization that lied for months about the potentiality of the covid to become a pandemic and that is excluding on political ground the country that handle best the virus (Taiwan). By still sponsoring this China’s lying organization, Bill Gates lost credibility in my eyes.
I could very well be that his interviews attract far more attention than interviews with experts, but you can't really compensate for that kind of name recognition.
If you think about it, having public policy being at least partially dictated by unelected and unaccountable individuals is not a good place to be.
Hasan Minhaj had an episode on the Patriot Act about this topic and how:
a) the huge sums of money and foundations these billionaires manage have less of an impact than one would think because of the staggered way that the money is handed out, organizational bureaucracy and the fact that most problems that they're trying to tackle don't really lend themselves to being quashed just by throwing money at them. Many pursue such philanthropy also in part to clean up their public image and as a tax reduction strategy.
b) those huge sums distort the domains that they are injected in and could in some cases cause harm. The Gates Foundation is known for favoring high-impact project and sucking the air out of the room for other initiatives for example.
However for someone living in a western European country it would not be received very well if a business person, even one with such a big philanthropic side to them, would become the go to authority on public health and wellbeing during this time. For that only be an actually trained and experienced professional can be turned to.
edit; spelling.
There is definitely a billionaire cult going on these days. I don't know when it started but I see more and more headlines "billionaire does X", "billionaire says Y". Somehow being a billionaire gives you credibility on everything you do or say.
He gets listened to so he does interviews. This wouldn’t be on HN if it were Fauci.
And he gets to say the unedited. He can call BS because he doesn’t have a boss who can yank his budget or job.
If they were asking him about funding these efforts, then yeah, he’d be the go to guy.
But asking him about the science?
This possibility has been discussed and researched for decades by experts and policy makers around the world.
I’ve heard my own CEO try explain something technical and it’s clear they don’t really understand it (and why should they? That’s why they hired experts).
In this article Bill says “most of the Covid tests are garbage”. That seems like a technical statement that should come from someone who is an expert in testing.
If the question was “what do you think the most promising Covid treatments are?” that’s a good question for Bill, assuming he’s involved in the funding decisions (maybe he’s not?).
- Bill Gates: 10 million clicks, $$$
- Joe Schmoe, MD, PhD: 0 clicks, no $$$
Dead Comment
If someone like Gates sounded the alarm on the poor way the U.S. was responding, it might have made a difference, but he did no such thing. Like most of the leadership in the U.S., he seemed to have a big blind spot with regards to how bad things could get in America. Some people were sounding the alarm early on (take a look at the last minute of this video[2] for an example), but were mostly ignored.
[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/How-to-respond-to-COVID-19 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8VImMUvz-A
Or is it just about the wealth?
Bill Gates is there because his foundation is responsible for helping to eradicate diseases and coordinate pandemic responses, so without his wealth he certainly has experience in this field.
> There’s this thing where the health worker jams the deep turbinate, in the back of your nose, which actually hurts and makes you sneeze on the healthy worker. We showed that the quality of the results can be equivalent if you just put a self-test in the tip of your nose with a cotton swab.
https://www.cms.gov/files/document/FFCRA-Part-43-FAQs.pdf
This interview is good but barely scratches the surface.
edit: I've just found a recent interview - while still high level, it's a bit more detailed. However, the comments section reads like 4chan, all of the top comments are trolls. What's going on? When/how did it become a thing to hate on Gates for his efforts to eradicate diseases?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF752acTijY
Once you light that spark, the useful idiots will help advance that agenda.
WOW. Why would someone in the tech industry like Gates be anti-encryption for the public? The only argument I can think of against it is "You have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide"
Would it be a map of unacceptable things, or an on device model like GPT3? Would you allow someone to type the offending thing and just disable the send button, or would you block it at the keyup event?
I don't see any way this could be implemented without kissing freedom goodbye.
I like the other commenter's take that this idea was just a bit out of exasperation.
And they wouldn't be wrong. If the same thing came out of someone else's mouth I assume you wouldn't be seeking out an unreasonably charitable explanation like this.
And if such a plan was introduced by Trump you probably wouldn't even think of this charitable version as a good plan at all because at the end of the day, things like censorship and mass surveillance are tools of oppression in the wrong hands, and you have no control whose hands it will end up in once it's normalized.
What does he mean by that ? That research regarding HIV, malaria and polio is slowing down ? Or that there'll be a rise in HIV/malaria/polio cases ?
How to Beat COVID-19 with At-Home, Rapid Result Testing: 5 Min. Summary by Dr. Mina (Antigen Tests)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZWuyvBAWWQ
Coronavirus Pandemic Update 98: At Home COVID-19 Testing - A Possible Breakthrough (~ 15 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Sv_pS8MgQ
At Home, Cheap, COVID-19 Tests with Results in 15 Minutes: How to Fix Testing with Dr. Michael Mina (~ 1 hr)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP-MHKU_cQE
My internet is too flaky here at the moment to verify, but I believe this is the URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFFlO7yBIBM
"That's a good business. It's zero times a number."