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.”

This is very disappointing. My response for people on this side is this: Great, hand me your unlocked phone. I promise not to share anything with anyone else.

That's not how I read it. The quote is Gates talking about Facebook. My interpretation isn't that he's saying E2EE is bad, but rather he's saying that E2EE is a convenient way for Facebook to avoid/deny responsibility for things being spread through parts of the platform that they own.

Ah the classic "why wont anyone think of the children" reasons.

His position doesn't seem to be a blanket "e2e should be banned", but rather that social networks have a responsibility to police discourse on their platforms and they've used e2e as a mean to avoid that responsibility.

I personally think it's a red herring - even where there is no e2e, like on regular FB, it's extremely difficult to police user-generated content and fake news (a category that arguably includes TFA). This is just trying to whip up a storm against Gates.

Pretty much every freedom facilitates crime in one way or another.

Nice equivocation of CP and asking critical questions about vaccine safety.