Ο Bill Gates is the favorite target of various conspiracy theories circulating about the coronavirus according with data collected from New York Times and Zignal Labs, a company that analyzes news sources.
Conspiracy theories linking Bill Gates to the virus were reported 1,2 million times on television and social media from February to April, 33% more times than the 2nd most popular conspiracy theory linking 5G by COVID-19, according to Zignal Labs, with 18,000 reports a day in April.
Conspiracy theories targeting the Microsoft co-founder are all over the placenetwork: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
The New York Times found 16.000 different Facebook posts were liked and comments nearly 900.000 times. The 10 most popular YouTube videos with conspiracy theories linking Bill Gates to the virus were viewed nearly five million times in March and April.
The "news" that spreads varies, but revolves around the founder of Microsoft and that he created COVID 19 to benefit from a vaccine in the future, or that Bill Gates is a member of a conspiracy that wants to kill humanity and / or that he wants implement a global monitoring system.
A speech by Bill Gates from 2015, warns that the greatest threat to humanity is infectious diseases, not nuclear war. This speech has received 25 million comments in recent weeks.
According to the New York Times, there are many who claim that the video is evidence of Gates' terrible plan to use a pandemic for personal gain.
Although Gates himself declined to comment, Mark Suzman, chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told the NYT that he was "saddened that there are people spreading all this, when we all need to find ways to work together and save lives. ”
