In Bill Gates’s defence, he was not wrong either. We really can check our sources in a way that usedn’t to be possible. Yes, we used to have gatekeepers, but for all that they kept anti-vaxxers and nazis off the air, they also knowingly raised a lot of colorful frauds and hucksters from obscurity. Turmp would be a notable example.
The thing Bill Gates wasn’t cynical enough to see, but Terry Pratchett was, is that the general public doesn’t base its esteem on credentials to begin with, so empowering them to do their own research makes no difference. A large part of the population is trained that if they see something on a screen, by definition, that is what they believe. I think this is much truer of pre-computer generations, and things will gradually improve for that reason; it might actually be that Gates sounds like the more sensible one by 2049.
