Bill Gates’s daughter reveals she was dumped by friends over conspiracy theories about dad

Bill Gates’ daughter has revealed she has lost friends over conspiracy theories about her billionaire father.

Phoebe Gates, 22, the youngest daughter of Bill and Melinda French Gates, made the shocking claim during a discussion about the spread of misinformation in Netflix’s new docuseries What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates, which premiered Wednesday.

As the conversation between her and her father continued, the billionaire and Microsoft co-founder asked his daughter if she had ever come across any conspiracy theories about him. One of them was that the COVID pandemic was a ploy to allow Bill Gates to put microchips in vaccines so he could track people.

“All the time,” Phoebe replied. “I’ve even had friends shut me down because of these vaccine rumors,” she said.

The 22-year-old reproductive rights activist recently graduated from Stanford University with a degree in human biology and was invited to appear on her father’s show when she was a senior.

She said at the time that she was concerned about the ability to effectively communicate accurate health information as more misinformation spreads online.

“I need to learn more,” her 68-year-old father admitted, “because I still naively believe that digital communication can bring us together and have a reasonable debate.”

But Phoebe says her father doesn’t realize that facts and logic are less important to people on social media than finding an escape from everyday life.

A popular conspiracy theory is that the COVID pandemic was a ploy to allow Bill Gates to put microchips in vaccines that would allow him to track people

Gates asked his daughter where she thought conspiracy theories came from. She replied that they came from fear.

During the COVID lockdowns, she explained, no one knew who to trust or what to believe.

“The pandemic was absolutely the worst thing that social media did, an oversimplification of the situation,” Gates agreed.

The two also discussed women’s reproductive rights and gender equality – two topics Phoebe is passionate about.

Gates later admitted that the conversation with his daughter was his “favorite” of the show

Gates later wrote that the conversation with his daughter was his “favorite” from the series and called it a “highlight of the series.”

He wrote on his Gates Notes blog that Phoebe ‘shared with me specific examples of how malicious actors are using misinformation and disinformation to disrupt progress.’

He said: ‘Phoebe has helped me better understand how women online – particularly women who advocate for other women – often face threats to their safety that are designed to make them think twice before speaking out.

“I’m not exactly unfamiliar with people being mean to you online, but I’m fortunate enough that I can (mostly) ignore what’s being said about me,” the billionaire admitted.

‘Phoebe explained how these threats can have a chilling effect on women’s rights activism and shared some thoughtful ideas about how to make the internet safer for everyone.’