The Gates family is highly influential, has more money than Davey Crocket, and as such gets far more attention paid to their opinions than is probably good for society. One speech from Bill Gates can altar the way an organization behaves. One check can put global institutions like the World Health Organization under his direct influence.
In fact, Politico once half-joked that Gates being the largest donor to the WHO makes him the most powerful “doctor” in the world.
Gates is so powerful that his wife, Melinda, also has an unusual amount of sway over the public. She’s sought out more often than one would think for her opinion on matters, and her recent opinion on internet censorship is dangerous, for lack of a better word.
Gates gave an interview with Axios where she warned that if social media companies don’t tighten the screws on its users with more censorship then America is in for a “reckoning.”
Like most pro-censorship advocates, Gates was concerned about the “vitriol” and “misinformation” circulating freely around the internet and believes a radical change needs to happen, but only after this pandemic is over.
Interestingly, most people believe the pandemic will be over after the election.
“I think it’s up to society to start to figure out, ‘OK, what do we do about that?’ How do we think about disinformation in a society or how do we think about political ads and where they should be placed and what they do or don’t get to say?” Gates said.
“So it might be time for some reckoning on that after this pandemic is over,” she added. “I don’t think in the middle of a pandemic, though, that that’s what we’re gonna get done.”
Gates also took shots at the Trump administration for “neutering the CDC” according to Axios. She accused the administration of politicizing basic health knowledge and defunding the World Health Organization.
Interesting opinions coming from the family that is the WHO’s largest donor and influencer.
“We’ve had terrible leadership on this issue quite frankly,” said Gates.
I call Gates’s idea about increased internet censorship dangerous because as she and her husband have made very clear, they have no problem pushing their own ideas and influence over major world organizations and making sure that they reign supreme.
The last people I want to be decided as to what is and isn’t right to say or do on the internet is a couple with too much time, money, and California moralism on their hands. Their environmental hypocrisy is already bad enough.
(READ: Study Finds Those Finger-Wagging Celebrity Eco-Warriors Emit 10,000 Times More CO2 Than the Average Person)
I’d rather the internet be the wild west than an Orwellian information factory where only the approved narratives are allowed to thrive. It’s happening now and the internet, and indeed our country, is already a worse place for it.
Information on COVID-19, for example, often finds itself being deleted if it doesn’t match the approved left-leaning narrative, even if that information comes directly from doctors themselves. If they don’t delete it, they’ll place warnings over it about how independent fact-checkers have ruled it to be false.
We’ve born witness to these “fact-checkers” checking facts and RedState alone is rife with articles debunking the clearly biased leanings of places like Snopes and PolitiFact.
No one side should be able to decide what is and isn’t the right idea. No one couple should have that idea either.
Whatever this “reckoning” Gates has in mind sounds rather Orwellian, but if she means that our society will suffer because of our lack of censorship then I’m going to have to disagree wholeheartedly. Perhaps her side, the left, will suffer, but not America.
Ideas should flow freely in our country. They should be presented in the public square, be debated and argued over, and individuals can decide for themselves if they wish to adopt that idea or not. Let the people decide for themselves.
If the Gates family has a problem with that concept then perhaps they can find a country where their belief in controlling ideas is more welcomed.
