[ani-ani]

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 communication should be illegal and the government should read everyone's private messages. What motivates a statement like this?

[tptacek]

What's frustrating about this question is that it (inevitably!) commands the top of the HN thread with a discussion of the least interesting thing in the article. It's an article about COVID and Facebook, and here we're recapitulating the end-to-end encryption debate for the 8-zillionth time.

[solarhoma]

I would argue that this statement from Bill is the most interesting. This statement shows Bill Gates, someone who has influence on legislatures, making a statement against encryption.

[justsee]

We aren't recapitulating the e2e debate, Gates is in his interview.

Someone like Gates pushing for the end of private speech at scale is always going to be of interest to the HN crowd.

[stjohnswarts]

It remains interesting that the various powers that be continuously want to take away what little privacy we 99% have. They can't imagine a world where normal people can exist without their oversight. This includes most billionaires and elected officials. I am glad he is contributing his billions to helping solve covid and other global disasters but these little clips can be telling about the individual's belief and to always realize they have many sides to their character.

[sxxahsuxh]

Bill Gates said something stupid and people are talking about it. His phrasing is what I expect an old person who doesn't have decades of industry pioneering experience in technology to say. So weird.

Point is, who cares what else he has to say if he says stuff like this? He's as much an expert on technology as he is on pathology, so if his opinions on technology are bad... well you get the point.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

In defense of the OP, fair balance: a counter complaint

What is frustrating about this comment is that it inevitably commands the top of the HN thread, "for the 8-zillionth time", because its author's moniker automatically attracts "upvotes" due its familiarity, not because the comment is the most interesting.

That said, this comment is probably worthy of being at the top since the E2E debate is indeed a tired one and that sentiment probably has many sympathisers. However, as someone else pointed out, Gates brought this up, not HN. And it does directly relate to discussions about COVID on Facebook (WhatsApp) and the ability to censor them. Of course, there is also the argument that newcomers to HN will not know all the past discussions of E2E, nor are they expected to read them before commenting. We regularly see HN re-post items that have previously been submitted, re-opening discussions that are old hat, inviting us to re-hash them.

While some readers may grow tired of seeing the same topics discussed over and over again, other readers may grow tired of seeing the same usernames at the top of so many threads, over and over again, no matter what their comments.

[robomartin]

@tptacek

This is one of the reasons for which I proposed that HN, by default, display discussions collapsed down to first branches. Just show the text for the first branches and collapse their corresponding conversations. Readers would only expand branches they find relevant or interesting and comment within them.

You could take this one step further and only show the first two lines (or n characters) of first branch comments. This would force a style where authors would have to provide a two line summary of their comment (if it is a first branch comment) in order to facilitate scanning. With this approach the list of first branches would almost look like the HN home page, where you can quickly scan the short titles and expand topics of interest.

To address your comment directly, if the inevitable makes it to the top of the first branch list it will be easy to scan other first branches on the same page without having to scroll or take any action. This might promote participation in other threads within the conversation and maybe even the bubbling-up of more "worthy" contenders for the top first branch.

[127]

It will remain very interesting up to the moment where someone comes up with a solution on how to escape a tyrannical panopticon totalitarian state.

[freddie_mercury]

HN is as much of an echo chamber as any other internet forum. 90% of the time you can predict in advance what the top-voted comment is going to be. Most of the time it will be some pointless quibbling about how the subject line technically isn't correct somehow. The rest of the time it'll be about one of the three or four hobby horses of HN. "I don't use social media", "WFH has no flaws", "whiteboard interviews are worse than waterboarding", etc.

[sukilot]

Bill Gates was the one who linked encryption to Covid, not HN.

[dpweb]

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 themselves the authority of what's true and what isn't?

I have to believe the only answer is something they call freedom of speech. You can say whatever the hell you want publicly. I'm appalled by the fact the highest authority in the world retweeted the sperm doctors video as well, but I'm not so comfortable with FB, Twitter, etc. deciding for me what is true and not, or worth me reading, either.

So, the encryption issue doesn't apply here. It's a serious issue, but separate. The problem is not that encrypted lies can be sent. The lies that reach 1000 people aren't the problem. The problem is the unencrypted lies that REACH 80 million+ people.

[RabbitmqGuy]

This.

Something I've wished for; hacker news only with top level comments

[gorgoiler]

Perhaps all top level comments could have a subject or title. It would be as if they were, themselves, submissions.

This is one of the things Slashdot did rather well with its categorization and ratings, though if that system were used then I’m sure everything would just be rated +5 Insightful with little signal over the noise.

[reillyse]

Yea, I feel bad about this tangent. I actually enjoyed the article, I just got annoyed about what I felt was a mischaracterization of the entire piece, leading to that mischaracterization dominating the discussion, I'm going to upvote the next comment..

[reillyse]

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 misinformation. That's separate from the argument about whether or not it's a good thing (I wouldn't see a problem with it personally).

[sxxahsuxh]

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.

[Orou]

You'd think given the amount of time he's spent working on Coronavirus that he might see the distinction between treating the symptoms and treating the cause, so to speak.

I've yet to see anyone provide any kind of evidence that suggests censorship changes people's minds about conspiracies - if anything it seems to be doing exactly the opposite.

[nojs]

> 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.

[jlokier]

What an interesting idea!

Several commenters point out end-to-end encryption would prevent filtering or tagging messages.

But that's not true. The message analysis could be done at either endpoint without violating privacy.

Tagging (or removing) a message before you send/forward it, or after you receive it, with "the central message of this comment has been tagged as "probably a hoax" by hoaxtracker.com; check out this CDC notice <here> to learn more".

<here> does not need to be a URL which reveals much other than your general interest in the subject. But if that seems too revealing, it could already be already available as part of the endpoint's filtering data and readable locally.

Lots of people forward (retweet), or write a little something before resharing what is false or misleading information, not realising they're doing so. I would not be surprised if getting those tags, rarely enough to stand out, before they send the message would cause some people to hesitate and check/think a bit more before sending. Maybe rephrase their attached comment into a question rather than confident outrage.

Technically this is not much different from privacy-preserving spam filtering.

[Canada]

The main purpose of E2EE communication between willing participants is that the content of the communication is not checked, inspected, scanned, questioned, sampled, matched, filtered, modified, blocked, altered, or otherwise interfered with in any way whatsoever except that which is explicitly configured and consented to by a party to the conversation. (eg. anti-virus, anti-spam, group membership, etc)

That means no control of communication by the endpoint software either directly or indirectly between willing senders and recipients regardless of justification, and especially on the basis of whether or not data send from a willing sender to a willing receipient represents the "truth". The endpoint software vendor has no standing to judge that unless it's an opt-in anti-spam type feature.

[devcpp]

It would indeed be very hard, if WhatsApp's own claim that messages are encrypted end-to-end is true. Either way (and I disagree that this should be a separate discussion) all methods of global speech control are eventually used for evil.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"It would be hard for WhatsApp to prevent people from spreading bogus videos, because they have access to the unencrypted information before and after sending."

Facebook/WhatsApp claims WhatsApp messages are "end-to-end" encypted. For example, here

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

Are the "end-to-end" encryption claims irrelevant if "they have access to the unecncypted information before and after sending"?

[b112]

I'm not sure he even said that.

When I look at the medium article, I see this:

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].

Note the []? Was this added in by Medium? Gates as an edit after a read-and-OK-to-release? Did Gates have editorial input?

Regardless, I believe [] means 'edited afterwards for clarity'. But by whom?

I Googled, and found this:

https://wccftech.com/bill-gates-hate-encryption/

Yet in this case, there was no hatred of encryption, but picked quotes where he suggested that in one case, if you have the means, the government should be aided .. eg, a murderer.

There was another article on hackernews, where many lamented how much the media just spins, takes quotes out of context, basically does whatever it wants to. I wonder, how much of this are we seeing here?

(Note, Gates could very much be for back-doored encryption, but my point is, I don't think it's a clear position due to this medium article.. where that stances was in [] and added by someone after...)

[eanzenberg]

“Spreading lies.” Sure, when we have almighty God say what’s the truth and what isn’t, let us know.

[_prototype_]

And who defines what a "lie" is?

[sukilot]

Then why did he mention encryption?

> (I wouldn't see a problem with it personally

The POTUS said CNN is fake news, hundreds of times. So, as you say, people should be prevented from sharing and reading it?! There's no problem with that?! The very first item on the USA Bill of Rights isn't important?

[another_day]

If we extend this line of thinking, where does it lead?

The goal seems to be removing easy access to communications where governments can't listen for signs of dangerous behavior. But individuals can write custom software. Is there a stage in this arms race where one would need company/nation-state level resources to communicate in private?

Is there a potential future in which every piece of end-user software can't run without being signed by the government and is enforced at the CPU level? I'd hate to think this is even possible, but my (limited) understanding of secure enclaves makes me think there's a chance.

[teddyh]

> But individuals can write custom software.

Not for walled garden platforms. See also The Digital Imprimatur:

https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/

[wittyreference]

Quick point: the entire controversial/nuanced part of that statement happened in the summary/paraphrase brackets, not his own words.

If you're sitting here going, "gosh, I wonder why someone that well-informed would say that?!", I'd point out that you don't actually know the full detail of what he said.

[H8crilA]

This is just Gates venting out, dude is sooo frustrated. Imagine doing as much as he did and still getting horseshit accusations about putting chips into people's bodies or whatever new nonsense they will come up in 6 months.

[matwood]

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.

[thu2111]

Yes, it must really suck.

He doesn't seem to realise however that he's making this far worse.

Literally a core part of the Gates/COVID conspiracy theories goes like this:

"Bill Gates want to track everyone and is using a COVID vaccine as a trojan horse to do it"

Then he goes and says, gee, maybe it shouldn't be possible to say things Bill Gates doesn't like and the way to implement this is to ensure tech firms can monitor and track everything everyone is saying.

He's basically giving his critics an intellectual ammo dump with this interview. Dude doesn't seem self-aware, at all.

[breck]

That was my take too. Him being frustrated at the problem. Sort of like when Obama rolls his eyes when someone makes a birther joke.

I personally think the solution isn't to make it harder to share lies, but easier to share the truth. Sharing the truth is actually extremely labor intensive.

[eanzenberg]

So he has thin skin? Then get out if the public limelight.

[partyboat1586]

He's thinking from a pragmatic, utilitarian mindset. He has no principles surrounding privacy. If it has to be sacrificed to get the job done that's fine in his mind as long as it's a net positive.

[devcpp]

You can be pragmatic and utilitarian and support privacy and free use of encryption. I would instead qualify his mindset of shortsighted.

[fartcannon]

Then he should lead by example.

[sukilot]

That's totalitarian not utilitarian.

[lemmonii]

Absolutely, I fear he has the same lack of principles regarding bodily autonomy and forced vaccinations.

[gexla]

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 this might get tricky is in decentralized platforms which nobody owns. But we don't need to deal with this right now because it's not yet a problem. This will be a cat and mouse game always.

EDIT: Points 1 and 2 aren't necessarily my beliefs. I haven't put enough thought and research into it to have a more fully formed belief. These points are just my interpretation of what Gates could be saying. The context of encryption is in these platforms. He's not attacking encryption in general. Though other sources may reveal more information which could change my interpretation.

[eanzenberg]

>>> 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.

[th0ma5]

Kinda rich he spearheaded his own control of what people do with his bytes to now say others can't. I wish it wasn't true that enabling something like this would compromise all of our collective security.

[bg24]

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.

[eanzenberg]

Sure, but then just argue:

Lie, fraud, child porn is real. Government should install 24-7 cameras in every private room of every citizen to curb all illegal activity.

[brandonmenc]

> What motivates a statement like this?

Because billionaires don't need encryption to keep themselves safe. The billions take care of that just fine.

[zurfer]

What motivates wired.com to put so much of such a controversial statements in brackets? What did he actually say?

[tehjoker]

He's a billionaire. The government defends his billions from being redistributed by angry dying people. He doesn't want potential revolutionaries to be able to communicate easily.

[goldenchrome]

This is the right answer. HN likes to think of Bill Gates as a techophile because that’s where he started, but today he’s foremost a billionaire with more to lose than to gain.

[kabacha]

Isn't he very vocal about the fact that rich should be taxed heavily?

[bobsil1]

Those dependent on federal gov biz cannot afford to openly oppose fed talking points (MS, SpaceX, telecoms).

[paganel]

Because they know what awaits them if they try to leave the "chosen path" (a path that also helps them remain billionaires, so not that difficult a moral compromise to make). See Joseph Nacchio [1]:

> Joseph P. Nacchio is an American executive who was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Qwest Communications International from 1997 to 2002. Nacchio was convicted of insider trading during his time heading Qwest. He claimed in court, with documentation, that his was the only company to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass surveillance demanded by the NSA which began prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

[dionidium]

> What motivates a statement like this?

The simple explanation is that there exist people who in good faith disagree with you about encryption.

[Spooky23]

Perhaps you should take pause and reflect on the broader issue Gates is talking about.

Social media is destroying our society in front of our eyes. Identifying how and why that is happening is something that matters too. The hardline techie position that all communications must be completely encrypted with obfuscated origins is a position whose consequences are not fully understood.

[3131s]

Encryption has nothing to do with the destructiveness of social media.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"As someone who has built your life on science and logic, I'm curious what you think when you see so many people signing onto this anti-science view of the world.

Well, strangely, I'm involved in almost everything that anti-science is fighting. I'm involved with climate change, GMOs, and vaccines. The IRONY [emphasis added] is that it's DIGITAL [emphasis added] social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, "OK, there's just an evil person, and that explains all of this."

Well, you're friends with Mark Zuckerberg. Have you talked to him about this?

After I said this publicly, he sent me mail. I like Mark, I think he's got very good values, but he and I do disagree on the trade-offs involved there. The lies are so titillating you have to be able to see them and at least slow them down."

Gates has a reason to be against the spreading of information on social media because recently he became a target of conspiracy theories spread on social media.

If encryption is an imediment to stoping people from spreading theories about him, then he obviously has a reason to be against encryption when used to spread these theories.

Maybe what is more interesting is when he uses the word irony right before he states he is against encryption.

What does he mean?

What is ironic about the fact that it is "digital social media" that allows "oversimplistic explanation[s]"?

HN readers can probably make better guesses than me. Disgreement with the guesses I make is expected.

For example, perhaps it is ironic because:

He has been such a strong proponent of using computers for anything and everything.

Gates was initially a skeptic of the internet, but later believed Microsoft's "internet strategy" was of primary importance. This led to projects like Internet Explorer and MSN. The company is now preparing to spend billions to acquire a social media company.

In amassing the fortune that allows him to pursue these philanthropic causes he and his company presented countless titillating, oversimplistic explanations of the value of using computers for seemingly anything. He wanted us to believe that the computer (running Windows of course) was the great enabler.

I have no idea what he meant and I am grasping at straws.

[kerng]

You are interpreting what he said to fit your understanding, he "literally" did not say what you describe as conclusion.

Also, sad to see the actual meaningful content of the article gotten less attention.

[lern_too_spel]

Where did he say government should read everyone's private messages? Governments can access my security box at the bank. That is different from governments rifling through it all the time.

[thekyle]

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.

[WarOnPrivacy]

>Where did he say government should read everyone's private messages?

He is demonizing encryption. There are few options that logically follow that stance.

[akshaybhalotia]

Just to make it clear, this seems very much like Gates to me as an Indian. He has bank rolled several very problematic studies in India in collusion with the fascist (at least super right wing) government, including the very controversial biometric national ID (AADHAAR) project. They were quite literally holding newborns hostages[1].

[1]: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/mps-largest-...

[WhompingWindows]

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

[eanzenberg]

Much illicit trade is empowered by encryption and bitcoin. I would bet at least 25% of bitcoin transactions are nefarious.

[thingymajig]

If you want to completely eradicate crime one way to do it would be to completely eradicate privacy.

Would you sacrifice your privacy if it could eliminate child pornography? The theory is hard to say no to, but in practice that kind of power has never worked out. If we want to retain privacy we have to accept some amount of crime going unnoticed.

[taberiand]

Such a premise begs the question that those given the power would sincerely use it to shutdown child exploitation and other crime.

It seems to me that there are many instances where child exploitation is ignored when it is politically convenient such that giving up our privacy wouldn't be of benefit to society, and would be largely to our detriment.

[kabacha]

You somehow imply that it's impossible to get rid of crime without getting rid of privacy which is an absurd claim.

Finally if you take a look at pure math - most of worlds suffering, evil and death is inflicted by world's governments. You'd put your trust in that over individuals?

[sudosysgen]

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? That is the issue.

[eanzenberg]

This is a general debate either for or against more government. It’s why the libertarian movement is closely related to open source, free speech, encryption and bitcoin.

[Gatsky]

Not sure how one could make such an ill-considered comment. It is always useful to ask 'cui bono?'. Who benefits the most from e2e? Is it the individual? Or is it Facebook and friends, who can use it to drastically lower content moderation costs, legal liability and the general smell from transmitting harmful content, while making a fortune. To me, they are doing what all 'great' capitalist enterprises manage to do, which is make someone else pay for the negative externalities of their business. For other examples see the fossil fuel industry, processed food, and the grandaddy of them all, big tobacco. Gates is not swallowing the koolaid.

[7leafer]

The desire to own all the information to own the whole world.

And it's obvious that this is not "his" statement, but a statement from the mouth of a puppet who is absolutely dependent on spreading the agenda in order to maintain his status quo of an "independent billionaire"

[therealdrag0]

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/

[sxxahsuxh]

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.

[cm2187]

Even on Covid. He warned in Feb that covid could result in 10 millions deaths in Africa, when we knew already from the Chinese numbers that the demographics of covid deaths was massively skewed toward 70yo+, and Africa has a very young population. I classify him in the FUD spreading category.

[jeromegv]

Here's an article here for someone who cares about the context (which you carefully avoided): https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-warns-coronavirus...

It wasn't about the demographic, but about the fact that their healthcare system would get overloaded, which impacts a lot of treatments for everybody else.

Also the problem with predictions of epidemic is that if you actually do a better job than expected at confinement / protection measures, then predictions are meaningless. You "could have" a lot of bad things happen, but once you do things right, they disappear. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have done those things, it just means that people have been warned properly. He said, if they get hit severely, impact would be much bigger than in the west. He didn't say the 10 million was a done deal.

[IkmoIkmo]

Why not? Africa has almost 1.3 billion people. The notion 0.8% could die from a pandemic which, let loose, can infect virtually everyone and has a 1% casualty rate is not so strange. Obviously measures were taken, but it's not so weird to talk about a scenario in which no measures are taken, in February when many countries had no clue what was coming to them and didn't take it too seriously yet.

[carpo]

Is this the quote you based your classification on? Seems like he is talking generally about the threat of a pandemic causing 10 million or more deaths. He also mentions Asia.

"This is a huge challenge, we’ve always known the potential for a naturally caused, or intentionally caused, pandemic is one if the few things that could disrupt health systems and economies and cause more than 10 million excess deaths.

This could be particularly if it spreads in areas like sub-Saharan Africa and some Asia, it could be very very dramatic.

We’re doing the constant science to provide the tools to do the diagnosis to provide vaccines, to provide therapeutics and hopefully contain this epidemic, but it’s potentially a very bad situation."

(found this here -> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/15/coronovirus-bill...)

[prox]

In The begin of February there were still a lot of unknowns, plus I have never seen these claims. So... citation needed.

[threatripper]

For Africa it's just "one more disease" that probably won't even show up much in mortality numbers because there's just so many other slow disasters at the same time.