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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

#331

Post by refurb »

yalogin wrote: post #262
refurb wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they can certainly ask Bill these questions, but I would say there are a ton of people who have far more expertise in infectious diseases than him. If they were asking him about funding these efforts, then yeah, he’d be the go to guy. But asking him about the science?

He is not about the details of the research, in the whole article he was simply talking about it as a manager who understands what he is leading. I am sorry but the way you phrased those statements feels as if you are convinced he is lying and has nefarious intent.

He makes the statement "most of the tests are crap". That seems like a technical question to me.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#332

Post by eanzenberg »

api wrote: post #310
flocial wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID will eventually pass even with unnecessary fatalities in its wake. E2e encryption and loss of rights will stay around much longer.

What does encryption even have to do with COVID? All the disinformation I see is cleartext on social media.

Gates is scared people are passing bad information through encrypted platforms such as whatsapp. Next, he will require 24/7 monitoring of every private citizen to make sure we don’t call him mean names.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#333

Post by sxxahsuxh »

reillyse wrote: post #109
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…

I don't think he is saying that encrypted communication should be illegal. He's saying that spreading lies through encrypted channels should be stopped. It would not be hard for WhatsApp to prevent people from spreading bogus videos, because they have access to the unencrypted information before and after sending. So either preventing people from sharing misinformation or preventing people from reading the misinforma…

You know, Snopes has said that running a fact checking organisation is incredibly difficult. It's easy to see why, you have to:

1) decide what the definition of truth is

2) differentiate between subjectivity and objectivity

3) differentiate between misleading and outright incorrect

4) investigate every piece of media thoroughly

5) avoid bias

6) peer review

7) correct any mistakes

And this list is just off the top of my head.

So what bill gates is saying is that you have to do all this at a scale of 1 billion users, all controlled roughly by a few centralised organisations. I think Bill's words are still kind of stupid even with context. The way to fight all of these problems has always been education, and social welfare, and things the government should ACTUALLY be doing, not vetting encryption schemes.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#334

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#335

Post by eloff »

justsee wrote: post #314
dpweb wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was puzzled by Gates' statement there. I didn't catch how the 'demon sperm doctors' video was related to encryption. Rather the very difficult and important issue, how do you stop someone with 80 million followers from spreading lies and large numbers of people believing them, and who determines what are facts and what are lies. By Facebook, Twitter, etc.. removing Trump's posts for instance, aren't they taking upon…

It was disappointing to see that segue from Gates. Consider that the pile-on of that doctor - an African from Cameroon where Christianity is blended with traditional tribal superstition - happened around the same time as the Professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health published a Newsweek piece on how HCL is a valid early-stage treatment [1]. I understand this is how the media works: an advocate of HCL…

Yes, objectively the evidence I've seen supports that HCL and zinc, if given early enough, improve the outcome for the patient.

The media, which is mostly left leaning, ignores this and instead prefers to take cheap shots at Trump whenever possible on the subject. It seems very biased, very childish, and entirely divorced from reality - actually that more or less sums up the state of US politics lately.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#336

Post by sxxahsuxh »

tptacek wrote: post #205
matwood wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but Gates has to know that on balance e2e encryption is better than not. I too feel the same frustration to a much lesser degree when talking to family members.

No, he doesn't have to know that. There is a deep divide on that question; it only seems like there isn't because this particular bubble we're in is essentially unified on it. That's not true of the wider world.

I find it impossible to argue against encryption. People should have the tools to do things secretly. If you want to prevent all the bad things Bill talked about, attack those things, not the tools.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#337

Post by dbtc »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #165
djsumdog wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really thing he's all altruism now? Remember how he got there. It wasn't on the backs of good things. He crushed all of his competition. I don't understand how people see him as some kind of hero now. He wants more power. The Gates funded oral polio vaccine in India was a fucking disaster!

People can’t change? That’s silly, people are always changing. People mellow out as they get older. They’re less combative, more willing to help and be part of a community.

I used to think people changed, but as I've gotten older I'm no longer sure that is true.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#338

Post by pteraspidomorph »

refurb wrote: post #331
yalogin wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not about the details of the research, in the whole article he was simply talking about it as a manager who understands what he is leading. I am sorry but the way you phrased those statements feels as if you are convinced he is lying and has nefarious intent.

He makes the statement "most of the tests are crap". That seems like a technical question to me.

He was talking about the performance of the procedure as a whole. He's saying most tests are unacceptably slow in the US because the labs doing the testing aren't paid less for being slow, so they take in more customers than they can handle reliably.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#339

Post by [deleted] »

bg24 wrote: post #248
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…

Problem (lie, fraud, child pornography) is real. IMHO, Bill is not proposing a solution to disable encryption. He is simply saying that government should not allow these activities encrypted. Industry, governments, academics should figure out the best solution.

[deleted]

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#340

Post by sxxahsuxh »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #270
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…

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 on of the trade offs are... https://samharris.org/podcasts/213-worst-epidemic/

So, let's walk through this. You have to either have a bunch of people look at child pornography and vet out all that content, or train a neural network on gigabytes worth of child pornography. Either way you want to fight child pornography by collecting and viewing tons and tons of it, as opposed to, I don't know, preventing children from being sex trafficked? Not letting children marry adults? The biggest porn website on the planet still has trouble solving this problem. Everyone in this thread including bill gates has assumed that this is an easy one to solve.

This is so asinine, especially because bill lumped this problem in with fact checking, which is in a completely different realm of problems.

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