• conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Cool story, Bill. Who did you donate to? Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing and coopting government for years? Bill isn’t innocent in all this, it’s just a good time to blame Elon. Don’t get me wrong, Elon 100% deserves it, but that doesn’t mean that Bill isn’t playing the PR game here.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing

      The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/11/17/bill-gates-foundation-pledges-7-billion-to-support-africa-health-and-agriculture/

      Could he do more? Sure. But attacking someone who is doing a little because he isn’t doing more doesn’t seem fair.

      Years ago Elon said he was disappointed when he met Bill Gates because Gates only wanted to talk about philanthropy and climate.

      • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Microsoft’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide is well documented, exposing its strong ties to the Israeli military, its collaboration with Israeli government ministries, and its involvement in the Israeli prison system, which is notorious for systematic torture and abuse of Palestinians. Microsoft knowingly provides Israel with technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), that is deployed to facilitate grave human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), as well as genocide. In light of the International Court of Justice’s legally-binding rulings to prevent Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza, as well as its July 19 Advisory Opinion affirming Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid system, Microsoft has failed its corporate obligation to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Microsoft, as well as its boards of directors and executives, may face criminal liability for this complicity.

        Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. Microsoft’s extensive ties with Israel’s military are revealed in investigations by The Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, demonstrating how the Israeli military turned to Microsoft to meet the technological demands of genocide.

        The 7 billion to Africa isn’t as nice as it first seems either; it’s investments into venture capitalist solutions, much more restrictive that aid and the profits are not realized by the locals

        https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/02/perhaps-bill-gates-not-best-expert-hunger-africa

        https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/11/10/open-letter-bill-gates-food-farming-and-africa

            • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              Saytalla seeking advice doesn’t mean Gates is making the business decisions.

              And claiming Microsoft cloud services are worse than RTX’s actual bombs that kill children is a stretch.

              • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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                2 hours ago

                And claiming Microsoft cloud services are worse than RTX’s actual bombs that kill children is a stretch.

                They all kill children and I boycott them all. You’re the only one running defense by minimizing Microsoft’s role here.

                For example, Amazon, Google and Microsoft have all launched major cloud computing centres in Israel, offering businesses infrastructure critical to data-driven products and services. Intel is the largest private employer in the country, having commenced operations in 1974.

                Along with hundreds of other multinationals, Microsoft hosts its own research and development (R&D) centre in Israel, and it launched a chip development centre in Haifa. Nvidia, the trillion-dollar chip behemoth powering the AI revolution, has also announced it is expanding its already large R&D operations in Israel. The list goes on

                Gates’ advice is reportedly treated as gospel, and he also played a crucial role in fostering Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership, and consequently, the success witnessed in the category.

                Claiming Gates isn’t heavily involved and influential in the business decisions is just straight up untrue, stop whitewashing his contributions to genocide.

                In summary, Bill Gates’s relationship with Israel is characterized by his admiration for the country’s technological innovation and his significant investments through Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. While he has not publicly engaged in the political aspects of the Israel/Palestine conflict, his actions and statements suggest a supportive stance toward Israel’s role in global technology. This support is evident in his continued investments and public recognition of Israel’s achievements in digital security and biotechnology.

                • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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                  2 hours ago

                  They all kill children and I boycott them all.

                  You know what actually supports Israel? Food imports. You should be boycotting American, Swiss, German and Dutch farm produce. Cut off their food and they can’t bomb.

                  Along with hundreds of other multinationals, Microsoft hosts its own research and development (R&D) centre in Israel,

                  Any company with an office in Israel? You boycott every large business? EVERY ONE? Apple, AMD, Intel, ARM? They are all in Israel. How are you even replying to this post without uses the CPU’s that you claim to boycott?

                  and he also played a crucial role in fostering Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership

                  AI isn’t killing children. Israeli leaders are killing children. OpenAI is super charged spell checker. Have you even used it? It fixes the grammar. It helps write software. But so did autocomplete before LLM’s.

                  Claiming Gates isn’t heavily involved

                  Are you an executive at Microsoft? Because if you aren’t YOU DON’T KNOW THAT.
                  https://www.techspot.com/news/107724-sources-detail-growing-rift-between-sam-altman-satya.html

      • JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.

        Philanthropists hoarding wealth and resources and then getting to choose which of the poors to allow to have any is actually part of the problem, even if it makes you feel good.

        We saw that when Gates leveraged his contributions to force a vaccine that had been developed with public money for the benefit of humankind, to become patent locked and hard for the Third World to access or afford.

      • audaxdreik@pawb.social
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        1 day ago

        The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place. You don’t get to be one by playing nice and not exploiting a lot of people and rules along the way. Sure the government could be blamed some for not having enough regulations in place to prevent/stop that, but capitalism ensures that businesses exploit any available loophole possible to maximize profit, otherwise you’re a bad business.

        While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways. $7 Billion dollars to Africa is just great, but it could do a lot of help here, too. I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first, through some sort of national aid, and not as an effort to spare the conscience of an aging billionaire.

        Fuck all billionaires. Every. Last. One. Forever.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place.

          That’s why that was my first sentence!

          • audaxdreik@pawb.social
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            24 hours ago

            The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on.

            Was your first point. I expanded on it by calling out that it is specifically theft and then going further to illustrate that he was using that theft to make personal choices about how that money should be spent, compounding the reasons I find this distasteful.

            Forgiving it simply because it’s philanthropy plays exactly into their narrative. Don’t buy it! Don’t defend billionaires to any extent.

        • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          Well now no US tax money is going to Africa, since people voted for Trump. Most Americans would rather see Africans exploited, starve and die than pay a bit more in taxes.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Still the wrong conversation. Yes he was appropriately villainized for anticompetitive behavior running Microsoft, accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of many others, but come on ……

          I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first,

          Just no. His philanthropy, his wealth. His choice.

          But I’m with you on inadequate taxation for the wealthy, and that we have a responsibility as a country to help the less privileged of humanity, and should not just assume someone’s personal largesse.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Wrong place for “both sides the same”. Sure, any of us could do more, and billionaires could do a lot more, but you’re equating a Nazi cutting entire government programs to aid the most vulnerable here and abroad, with a billionaire who has donated a significant portion of his personal wealth to aid humanity, including eradicating diseases

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        Nah, I saw a year or two back that Bill was pulling back from his climate and disease philanthropy. I think this is just him jumping on a chance to do some PR by dunking on Musk.

          • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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            18 hours ago

            Well, a few things:

            1. they say the only bad press is no press.

            2. We’re at a moment where anger against the wealthiest people on the planet has never been higher, except maybe during a revolution. Bill is among this group, and he’s likely cognizant that Dingus and Doofus up in DC are exacerbating that sentiment. Maybe he’s hedging his bets to keep from getting put against the wall.

            3. Didn’t he fly to Epstein Island? Wasn’t it shortly after we found out about that that Melinda divorced him? Probably not the most recent thing he’d like to be remembered for.

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        Nobody, but I voted for Harris. Last I saw, Gates was cutting back on donating to his foundation that fights infectious diseases in the developing world.

        • Godric@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          So you’re just whingeing online about someone who plans to spend 99% of their wealth on saving millions of lives, while you’ve done fuck-all.

          Let me stop what I’m doing so I can clap for you and your moral high ground.