Bill Gates has been the subject of several conspiracy theories — including that he forces people to eat bugs and that he’s part of a race of shapeshifting lizards — but his daughter Phoebe has had friendships end due to stories that have run rampant about her dad and Covid vaccines. “I’ve even had friends cut me off because of these vaccine rumors,” she shared with her father in new Netflix docuseries “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates,” People notes. Her comments were a reference to the debunked belief that Gates put microchips in the Covid vaccines in order to track people.
Bill still has optimism about the online world, responding to his daughter’s reveal, “I don’t know, I need to learn more because I naively still believe that digital communication can be a force to bring us together, to have reasonable debate.”
Phoebe went on to add that her father doesn’t always understand “that it’s not really logic and fact that win out” online. “People want an escape, they want to laugh, they want an engaging video, they want to be taken away from boring reality.”
The misinformation that surrounded both Covidand the vaccines makes it “scary” to think about what might happen if “we have a pandemic that’s 10 times worse,” the elder Gates continued, which prompted his daughter to stop him. She told him, “they’re gonna think you’re gonna cause it then” if he predicts it on this show.
In an interview with CNET published Wednesday, Gates said he was once confronted on the street by a woman who believed the microchip conspiracy theory. He told her, “I really don’t need to track you in particular.”
Gates released his five-part documentary series “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates” on Netflix this past week. In the series, the Microsoft founder explores “the challenges and innovations shaping our world” — including misinformation.
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