So I just read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.
Brave of you to hold a nuanced opinion! So many people have a very binary view of others, and Lemmy’s the same, as the downvoting shows.
And yes, totally, he was a typical morally corrupt businessman and one of the first tech bros in a time before most of Lemmy was even born. But he’s also done a lot of good in the second half of his life. People are dismissive of that but they bloody well shouldn’t be.
Who else has contributed $2bn specifically to fight malaria? Nobody. There’s quite a few now who could have helped but nobody else has. The Gates Foundation has also contributed that much again towards fighting Tuberculosis and AIDs. These are big numbers and they’ve had a real effect. Those of us who live comfortable lives are fortunate where these diseases aren’t everyday killers of friends and family and we cannot fully appreciate the benefit this work has done.
Does this offset his earlier negative behaviour? I honestly think it might do.
What a ridiculous argument you’ve made here. The voting system is literally binary. No one can vote 7/10 on messaging, 4/10 on points.
This is exactly why hes done it. You don’t know what hes actually responsible for. You don’t see the pharmaceutical investments hes made, farmland he owns, or his bad takes (like recently suggesting that we should abandon the climate because he’s dipping his toes into the AI space).
You see some flashy figures and figure, well that must be a good guy!
Some “nuance” that is.
Why would he give a shit what people think about him? Others rich people don’t because when you’ve got enough money you can insulate yourself entirely from what the world thinks.
Nor do the people judging him so harshly.
The fuck? Why would he donate money and save countless lives just to benefit from it via some claimed business link?
What a ridiculous argument you’ve made here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4TunaXwprQ
This is the most ridiculous line of reasoning.
Firstly, many rich people care. Many care about their “legacy”. They want their names on big donations, and on school campuses.
Secondly, many rich people spend inordinate amounts on PR advisement firms, demonstrating that there are significant dollar values put into caring about this. We’re talking about PR for the person, not even for a business.
They judge from what is known. You judge from giving him the benefit of the doubt between the cracks.
This is such a bizarre misrepresentation of what my comment is clearly saying.
I am clearly pointing out that he is still doing evil and you are being blinded by some fancy curated numbers.
I don’t even know how you got to that conclusion.
I wish there was a better way than the “be a horrible piece of shit for the first half of your life until you get your bag, then do nice stuff to rehab your image” path a lot of of them seem to take, but at least we get something out of some of them that way I suppose.
He never stopped doing bad things, he just started rehabing his image