Bill Gates has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, from forcing people to eat bugs to being some kind of shape-shifting lizard, but his daughter Phoebe’s friendship with her father ended after rumors spread about him and the COVID-19 vaccine. “I’ve had friends cut me off because of the vaccine rumors,” she told her father in the new Netflix documentary series, What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates, according to People. Her comments were a reference to a now-debunked theory that Gates put microchips in COVID-19 vaccines to track people.
Bill remains optimistic about the online world, responding to his daughter’s confession: “I don’t know. I need to learn more. I still naively believe that digital communication can be a force that connects us and forces us to have rational discussion.”
Phoebe added that her dad doesn’t always understand that “logic and facts don’t prevail online. People want escape, they want to laugh, they want compelling videos, they want to get away from the boring reality of life.”
Gates continued by saying he was “scared” to think about what would happen if misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines “led to a pandemic that was 10 times worse,” but was cut off by his daughter, who told him that if he predicted that on the show, “everyone would think you were going to cause it.”
In an interview with CNET published Wednesday, Gates said he once encountered a woman on the street who believed in the microchip conspiracy theory, to whom he told, “There’s absolutely no need for us to track you.”
Gates last week released a five-part documentary series on Netflix called “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates,” in which the Microsoft founder explores “the challenges and innovations shaping our world,” particularly misinformation.
