Philanthropist, co-founder of Microsoft, and former wealthiest person in the world, Bill Gates, has become a person of intrest for many online trolls and disinformation campaigns. A variety of  narratives can be found online, ranging from personal attacks to conspiracy theories linked to his foundation. In this blog we’ll dive into some of the narratives we found online.

You get a microchip! You get a microchip! We’re all getting microchips!

A YouGov poll shows that a staggering 28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to implant microchips in people. This number is even higher amongst Republicans at 44%. While it is true that Bill Gates is investing a lot of money to find a potential cure or vaccine for Covid-19, there is no evidence whatsoever that he is doing this with ulterior motives. Microchips implanted by a tech giant makes for a good story, but there is no indication that this is possible on a large scale. And more importantly, a vaccine to protect you from Covid-19 isn’t even developed yet.

Welcome to the great corrector.

A fake letter circulated in China months after the first covid-19 outbreak. In this letter is written that the pandemic is not a disaster but a “great corrector”, and is signed by Bill Gates. Days later the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation send out a warning that this letter is a fake, calling on people to stop sharing the letter.

The vaccine might kill you!

A fake tweet claiming that: ”Bill Gates admits the vaccine will no doubt kill 700,000 people” is a very popular piece of content in the online far-right scene. This quote is based on an interview where Gates talked about hypothetic side-effects, of a hypothetical vaccine: ”If we have one in 10,000 side-effects, that’s way more… 700,000 people who will suffer from that.” While Gates was not talking about deaths, or about an existing vaccine, conspiracy theory websites like Info Wars used this quote in their videos and articles.

Bill Gates wants to reduce the human population on earth.

A doctored image shows a special center, built by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, specifically designed for human population reduction. Not much of an conspiracy, putting names like this on a building 😉