Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently gave his opinion on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, stating that he is unsure of Musk’s motives and that he could make misinformation on the platform worse.
The Wall Street Journal reports that speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit earlier this week, Microsoft founder Bill Gates weighed in on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Gates stated that he was unsure of Musk’s motives for purchasing the company and reiterated that social media needs to crack down on “misinformation.”
“He actually could make it worse,” Gates said referencing misinformation on Twitter. “It’s not totally clear what he is going to do.”
Musk and Gates have clashed in the past with Musk recently revealing that Gates had reached out to him to discuss philanthropy in climate change. Musk claims he asked Gates if he still had a $500 million short position in Tesla, to which Gates responded that he did. Musk said that he could not take Gates’ climate change philanthropy seriously if he was shorting an electric car company.
Gates discussed the situation stating: “I don’t think whether one’s short or long Tesla is a statement about your seriousness about climate change. I applaud Tesla’s role in helping with climate change.”
He further noted that if Musk “makes Twitter worse, fine, I’ll speak out about that, but I wouldn’t assume that’s what’s going to happen.”
Gates stated that he believes that political leaders have a role to play in fighting “misinformation,” stating: “When you do not have the trusted leaders speaking out about vaccines, it is pretty hard for the platform to work against that. We have a leadership problem, and we have a platform problem.”
He added: “The way that you make those platforms spread truth and not crazy stuff, there’s some real invention required there, and it’s partly in the political realm. I don’t have the solution to that. I hope lots of brilliant people are thinking about it, but it is a huge problem in terms of legitimacy of the elections or medical innovations.”
Read more at the Wall Street Journal here
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com