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Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

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Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#281

Post by richardw »

refurb wrote: post #36

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it odd that Gates is the go to source for public health issues. His biggest contribution is money, which pays for really smart people to tackle these issues. So why not talk to the really smart people he hired?

Question 2, he says the CDC should be the face of the pandemic response because they’re the experts “by a lot”.

He gets listened to so he does interviews. This wouldn’t be on HN if it were Fauci.

And he gets to say the unedited. He can call BS because he doesn’t have a boss who can yank his budget or job.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#282

Post by Keyframe »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #73
mehrdadn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget he gave a TED talk warning the world about the next pandemic. And obviously he knows a thing or two about high-level issues dealing with epidemics (which extend beyond just the medicine). Why would they just ignore him?

But why listen to him either? You could have talked to any disease expert over the last few decades and they would have told you that a pandemic will be coming and that we aren't prepared.

Unlike a field expert, dude has influence, reach and an organization (with experts) in the trenches, and now decades of experience in all of the above. He’s not a couch-commenter. It’s like asking why we ought to listen anyone from Y itself here since they have zero experience with temp/vacation housing, storage, payments... all true, but they have experience with people and what and where and when to listen to. Gates is like that, multiplied by decades of experience.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#283

Post by eanzenberg »

hetspookjee wrote: post #152
nojs wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would not be hard for WhatsApp to prevent people from spreading bogus videos The problem is there’s no agreed upon definition for what’s “bogus”. A while ago someone commented here with a list of statements ranging from obviously false obviously true to show how hard the problem is, I wish I could find it.

I wish you could too, as it sounds very interesting!

Here’s some examples.

A few weeks ago on HN was the outrage that Apple kept the 30% app store revenue cut on a return. This was outright false but led to a 1000 comment thread circle-jerk hating on Apple.

Early in the pandemic the WHO claimed coronavirus could not be transmitted to humans.

Having a central arbiter of “truth” is dangerous, fascist and there’s a reason freedom of speech has barely any limits on a constitutional basis.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#284

Post by novok »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #128
lordofgibbons wrote: post #95

>And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger]. WOW. Why would someone in the tech industry like Gates be anti-encryption for the public? The only argument I can think of against it is "You have nothing to worry about if you ha…

Considering encrypted messages have to both be encrypted and decrypted, I don't think his statement is necessarily against encrypted. I assumed he meant preventing the sending of known materials like that and / or the opening of it (which wouldn't interfere with end-to-end encryption at all).

Don't worry, billg will make sure his messages will be encrypted. Can't let the idiot poors say the wrong things amongst each other.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#285

Post by social_quotient »

social_quotient wrote: post #103
creato wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter who you put forth saying what Gates has been saying, they will quickly be tarnished by the same baseless bullshit. Effectively 0% of people knew who Facui or Birx were before the pandemic. Now they're the target of the same kind of controversy.

Maybe zero young people but I’d say well informed middle age and up would know who Facui is. It’s hard to debate this with a source but these people have even in the news for decades when things go wrong. I disagree with the “effective 0%”

Gosh down votes for this

Okay let me try to show my side of “0%“ is wrong”

“author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,300 scientific publications, including several textbooks.“

“Dr. Fauci ranked 7th out of more than 1.8 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2020.”

Note this isn’t just 2020. It’s a long history.

“Dr. Fauci was appointed director of NIAID in 1984.” And has served under 6 presidents. Most of which had more than 1 term.

If you are looking for a long list of awards and honorary doctorates head over to his Wikipedia page.

To the replies I got - I don’t consider 30’s middle aged. I guess I was thinking if you were around with AIDS news in the 80’s you might remember him. Oxford dictionary considers middled aged 45-65 - google trending searches isn’t how I would evaluate the history of someone over decades of time.

For fun I did fin a bunch of videos of times he was on TV via YouTube. So again my point is that 0% is far from right.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#286

Post by nradov »

phatfish wrote: post #206
thekyle wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice there is no scalable way for the government to check everyone's security box every second. However, it is possible for them to scan every message sent in real time and past leaks have shown that they will if given the opportunity.

I think that's the problem. We need to be able to trust they wont, in the current climate there is no chance of that. If there were strong privacy laws defining how and when data could be collected and accessed then in theory I'm happy for the right people to have access to investigate criminal acts. Under a warrant that a judge has reviewed. But currently it seems to be a free-for-all with tech companies being the o…

There is the legal issue, and also the technical issue. Even if the law sets strict limits on decryption that will become moot if the key is leaked.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#287

Post by throwawaythekey »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #268
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates seems to hint that the way to reduce lie-sharing is by eliminating safe encryption (replacing safe encryption with unsafe encryption). This is an inherently dangerous stance (to everyone except repressive authoritarians).

Are you familiar with how much child pornography has ballooned from social media? I hadn’t until I listened to this podcast with NYT investigative journalist. Worth considering how serious the trade offs are https://samharris.org/podcasts/213-worst-epidemic/

I normally enjoy Sam but found that episode was voiced more by his inner parent than his usual hyper-rational self. Child porn is a scourge that should be destroyed but there was minimal discussion of the following that I would normally expect from Sam:

  - Relative merits of the alternatives to the banning/reduction of e2e encryption, e.g stronger police resources, education and community programs

  - Is there a strong link between the sharing of material and the creation of material?
To demonstrate the seriousness of the issue they cite a study that around 5% of the population have consumed child pornography. My own experience has been that unsavoury images can be posted in public places and none of the viewers intend to see the material. I suspect (and hope!) this is where the 5% comes from. This is not caused or solved by the masses having access to encryption.

I wouldn't be surprised if I was having this reaction just because of my idealogical support of encryption.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#288

Post by TheOperator »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #216
ipsum2 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess that makes the guy who manages my software engineering team a software engineering expert too? If they do it very well and can point to measurable results of success, I would think so!

So if an engineering team is successful, then their manager is necessarily an engineering expert? You’re really not providing any rationale to support this rather extreme position. Bill Gates experience in the field of public health is choosing projects to finance, and even then he is not the primary person responsible for that in his foundation. Bill Gates has no credentials you could point to, and has done no work…

>He has done no work you could point to

His work in eradicating Polio. Choosing which projects to finance is a skill in itself, something he's likely more capable of than a traditionally credentialed expert. I can't help but think that you have an arbitrarily narrow definition of expertise.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#289

Post by WhompingWindows »

ani-ani wrote: post #93

He is easily one of the least bullshit-y sources when it comes to handling of COVID. But then there's this right in the middle of the interview: " And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger] ". Quite literally, encrypted comm…

Do you think the child sexual abuse epidemic is empowered by encrypted communication?

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#290

Post by eanzenberg »

gexla wrote: post #263
ani-ani wrote: post #93

He is easily one of the least bullshit-y sources when it comes to handling of COVID. But then there's this right in the middle of the interview: " And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger] ". Quite literally, encrypted comm…

There's a lot to unpack in that quote and much of it is up to our interpretation. I feel that the following statements could both be true. 1. Social media platforms should be able to monitor what content users are sharing on these platforms. Therefore these platforms maybe shouldn't have end-to-end encryption. 2. People need to have access to encryption for their own usage outside of social media platforms. Where thi…

>>> Social media platforms should be able to monitor what content users are sharing on these platforms.

Then you’re not a platform, you are a publisher and should be held accountable for what you choose to publish. A platform is literally that: a platform for use by users as they see intended. I’m not talking about trolls, spammers, hackers and those who post illegal content. When platforms move down to editorialize content, they cease to be defined as a platform.

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