Bill Gates advocates for stopping end-to-end encryption (opens in new tab)

Is this real news? I see no mentions of primary sources, and when I do a google search I find some much older articles with much more context and nuance.

I’m not sure I believe this in any way. It is taking quotes out of context, and creating an exaggeration.

This bears more research. Disturbing if true. Article is marred by inflammatory rhetoric.

I don't believe there is a way to stop end-to-end encryption. You can easily make data look non-encrypted but actually contain something encrypted underneath.

The actual quote, without breathless editorializing, is:

"The irony is that it’s digital social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, 'OK, there’s just an evil person, and that explains all of this.' And when you have [ ] 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."

I've removed Wired's additions within brackets, and suddenly it doesn't seem at all clear Gates is talking about end-to-end encryption directly. It might be said that is the only way to accomplish his wish, but when I first read the article I thought he could as easily be talking about legal remedies as anything else.

Bill, I thought you were a pretty smart guy... Can't you think of anything that will increase public health knowledge and awareness (especially vaccines) that doesn't involve monitoring private conversations for goodthink? I think this is a very lazy way to go about you foundation's mission statement.

If we can't (and I really don't think this is the case), then anti-vaxxers are the price we pay for a free and open society. To quote David Foster Wallace, there is a "baseline vulnerability" that a free society has (whether it be terrorism or the proliferation misinformation), and those that succumb to those vulnerabilities are "sacrifices on the altar of freedom." [0]

[0] - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-as...

Even if true, he's just one (already rich) person.

Is this click-bait news, I cannot tell anymore?

He didn't outright advocate for it from the interview that I believe motivated this article, but he did pretty strongly imply that end-to-end encryption facilitates crime and shouldn't be allowed:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/bill-gates-lies-spread-faste...

>“Some of the messages on their platform, they don’t even see because of the encryption on WhatsApp,” Gates said. “In order to not have any responsibility, they’ve made that opaque. You know, so whatever the issues — anti-vaccine, child pornography — they have made sure they can’t intervene on those things.”