Bill Gates’ daughter makes heartbreaking admission over wild Covid conspiracies about dad
Bill Gates’ daughter has revealed how “friends cut me off” due to vaccine conspiracy theories involving her dad.
Phoebe Gates, 22, discussed the spread of misinformation in the docuseries “What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates on Netflix. And she opened up about the conspiracy theories involving the Microsoft co-founder – including a wild claim that Covid was part of a plan to allow Gates to put microchips in vaccines so people could be tracked.
“All the time,” said Phoebe who has recently graduated from Stanford University with a degree in human biology. “I’ve even had friends cut me off because of these vaccine rumours.” Phoebe was talking on the documentary during her final year at school and she discussed how she was worried about misinformation during attempts to effectively report accurate health news.
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In reply, Bill admitted: “I need to learn more,” adding: “I naively still believe that digital communication can be a force to bring us together, to have a reasonable debate.” Phoebe said that people used social media as a form of escapism and that conspiracy theories thrive in an environment of fear.
And Bill agreed: “The pandemic was definitely social media at its worst, oversimplifying things.” The 68-year-old has also published a blog post where he discusses the Netflix series and how he learnt about new social media trends from his daughter.
“Few people in your life can be as direct with you as your own children,” he said. “Phoebe and I talked about growing up with social media, how to become sophisticated about its use, how not to feed the trolls, how to seek out different viewpoints, and the important lesson (for me, at least) that no one uses Facebook or email anymore.”
On the subject of not emailing he added: “When I asked her why not, she said, ‘No one uses e-mail for personal communications anymore. Just text me’.” But he also joked that they have now found a compromise.
“I ended up meeting her halfway. These days, I text her to say that I’m sending her an email,” he wrote. “And we’ve actually ended up talking more on the phone. I can’t wait to see how her advocacy work will make a difference in the world —and hear what she thinks of What’s Next? now that it’s out.”
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