Bill Gates warns misinformation is burden passed down to children after youngest daughter’s online harassment

Gates, who has long been scrutinized by the public, admitted he had been naive in assuming that increased access to information would naturally lead to a pursuit of truth, rather than spreading misinformation now passed down to younger generations, as reported by Fortune.

Speaking to CNBC Make It, Gates shared how his daughter’s experiences with online harassment opened his eyes to the severity of the problem. "Hearing my daughter talk about how she’d been harassed online, and how her friends experienced that quite a bit, brought that into focus in a way that I hadn’t thought about before," Gates said.

Phoebe, 23, who co-founded the AI shopping tool Phia, has previously spoken out about misconceptions surrounding her family life, including being ridiculed for being in an interracial relationship. On her podcast, "The Burnouts," she revealed that she and her siblings were made to use their mother’s last name instead of Gates to avoid unwanted attention.

She also discussed the pressure of being the children of one of the world’s most famous figures. "I had so much insecurity and such a desire to prove myself," she recalled of her early days at Stanford University.

Bill Gates and youngest daughter Phoebe Gates. Photo courtesy of Bill Gates' Instagram

Despite his awareness of the spread of misinformation, Gates, who is now worth $103.7 billion according to Forbes, acknowledged the human tendency to seek out information that aligns with personal beliefs.

"We have context where we want correct information, like hopefully when we want medical advice," he explained. "But then we kind of like, in our community and enclave, have these shared views that kind of pull us together."

He also admitted to occasionally falling into this trap, saying that, when reading a criticism of a politician he disliked, he sometimes enjoyed it even if it was exaggerated.