Bill Gates has for many years been at the vanguard of the battle against poverty and disease. Five years ago he gave a TED Talk in which he ended up commenting on how devastating a truly global pandemic could end up being if steps were not taken to prepare for such an occurrence. After urging preparedness for pandemics for years, Bill Gates was vindicated by the spread of the novel coronavirus, something that has brought the world to a halt and has taken hundreds of thousands of lives in spite of the fact that steps were taken by most governments to prevent the virus from truly spreading.
In an attempt to help the world fight back against this pandemic that has brought the global economy to a halt and has racked up a tremendous human cost, Bill Gates has campaigned quite a bit to raise awareness. He has also recently donated a quarter of a billion dollars in order to fund research about the virus as well as to help in the development of a vaccine that would help people become immune to the virus entirely which in many ways is the only thing that can truly be done to stop the virus in its tracks before it ends up doing any more damage.
However, Bill Gates has also criticized social media companies for facilitating the spread of misinformation. In a recent interview, the billionaire tech tycoon commented on how damaging misinformation can be and how it can contribute to the spread of the virus. According to Bill Gates, social media platforms are serious culprits in this situation, so much so that they might even be directly responsible for it in some way, shape or form.
Essentially, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, both of which Bill Gates mentioned by name, have ended up creating public forums with widespread influence where people can say whatever they want. While misinformation can be dealt with by removing posts and the like and putting disclaimers up, at the end of the day this doesn’t deal with all of the misinformation present on these platforms.
With all of that having been said and out of the way, it is important to note that Bill Gates certainly does have a point since social media has resulted in far more misinformation being spread than might have been the case otherwise.
Credit: ABC via Getty Images
Read next: Report Reveals That Facebook Quietly Removed Fact-Check Labels on Viral Climate Change Denial Content
In an attempt to help the world fight back against this pandemic that has brought the global economy to a halt and has racked up a tremendous human cost, Bill Gates has campaigned quite a bit to raise awareness. He has also recently donated a quarter of a billion dollars in order to fund research about the virus as well as to help in the development of a vaccine that would help people become immune to the virus entirely which in many ways is the only thing that can truly be done to stop the virus in its tracks before it ends up doing any more damage.
However, Bill Gates has also criticized social media companies for facilitating the spread of misinformation. In a recent interview, the billionaire tech tycoon commented on how damaging misinformation can be and how it can contribute to the spread of the virus. According to Bill Gates, social media platforms are serious culprits in this situation, so much so that they might even be directly responsible for it in some way, shape or form.
Essentially, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, both of which Bill Gates mentioned by name, have ended up creating public forums with widespread influence where people can say whatever they want. While misinformation can be dealt with by removing posts and the like and putting disclaimers up, at the end of the day this doesn’t deal with all of the misinformation present on these platforms.
With all of that having been said and out of the way, it is important to note that Bill Gates certainly does have a point since social media has resulted in far more misinformation being spread than might have been the case otherwise.
Credit: ABC via Getty Images
Read next: Report Reveals That Facebook Quietly Removed Fact-Check Labels on Viral Climate Change Denial Content
