HACKER Q&A
📣 tempsy

Why has Bill Gates become a conspiracy magnet?


Maybe I haven’t been paying close attention, but I feel like as soon as Bill Gates reemerged in the public eye during this pandemic as part of his foundation’s effort to back vaccine research for the coronavirus he’s suddenly become the primary target for conspiracy theories related to everything from vaccines to 5G to mind control, etc.

Was he always the subject of conspiracy theories that I may have missed? Or is this a recent development that he somehow got pulled into due to his vaccine work (which has become more controversial in recent years)?

  👤 simonblack Accepted Answer ✓
People don't change. Leopard don't change their spots. Gates has always been a secretive, grasping, amoral actor. He was notorious in the 80s and 90s when he was the head of Microsoft in being the instigator of Microsoft's nefarious practices.

Don't take my word for it, the evidence of that is available all over the internet. Google for it. Some words you might want to Google together with 'Microsoft' are: AARD, OOXML, Halloween Documents, Netscape + 'take away their oxygen supply', _NSAKEY, Stac Electronics, etc, etc, etc.

👤 wmf
Rob Reich kind of painted a target on Gates 18 months ago and I think there was a sort of latent blowback waiting for him to do something. Then this year Gates basically said "I warned you about pandemics, you didn't listen, and now I'm going to bail you out" and then people are like "oh yeah, aren't we supposed to hate this guy?"