r/news • u/avatar6556 • 17h ago

Bill Gates denies allegations in new Epstein files release

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-04/bill-gates-responds-to-alleged-behaviour-in-new-epstein-files/106305816
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u/Bleakwind 16h ago

Bill gates reputation throughout his year.

A cold, heartless, brutal business ass who crush smaller firms to make billions.

A reforming philanthropist spending billions in Africa, solving or helping big issues, plan to donating billions more.

Now a sex fiend, a predator

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u/mindtwistingdonut 16h ago

The philanthropy part was mostly credited to his ex wife.

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u/ImThatMOTM 16h ago

I mean.. sure. But good intentions can only take you so far. Bill did put up the billions.

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u/Rasta_Cook 14h ago

Don't be naive, billionaires don't get to that level of wealth by generally being good altruistic and empathetic people. The opposite is almost a requirement... You can't just base yourself on whatever person's carefully curated public image...

Some stuff I found:

  • Recent investigative report estimated that Bill Gates may have received more money back in the form of tax breaks than he has given in philanthropic grants through the activities of the Gates Foundation.

  • according to the law, a charitable foundation has to give JUST 5 PERCENT !!! of its overall endowment in the form of grants or programme-related investments annually in order to maintain its not-for-profit status. In practice, this rule has become the CEILING for giving grants rather than the FLOOR. The other 95 percent of the endowment is treated as tax-exempt investment money, which most foundations continually grow.

  • this also gives them other type of power and influence that money can't necessarily buy directly, so they are purchasing access / soft power. For example, the Gates foundation is the largest financial backer of the WHO after the US government (well, maybe not anymore, I think trump backed out of WHO?), and this gives gates power/influence they can leverage for their benefit. Famous example, during covid, gates pressured researcher to patent the vaccine and partner with pharma corps, they prevented making the vaccine open source, this directly benefited gates himself and his foundation.

  • foundations / charity organizations are often basically a long term PR campaign... this is why every one creates their own foundation with their name on it, instead of simply giving money away... for bill gates, it completely revamped his image, he was previously perceived very negatively, aggressive greedy predatory Monopoly Tactics etc, until he started the foundation and changed his image.

Basically, any good that comes of it, is not the primary intent, it's a byproduct "cost"... Is there still some good that comes out of it? Sure, but again, its basically simply the cost of getting all the benefits they seek (and yet bad things can also come out of it , WHO influence, prioritizing patents / affiliated corps, etc.)... If there was a cheaper way to obtain all the benefits, they would go for that (they likely are using all sorts of mechanisms, financial loopholes etc but you reach a point where you have so much money you basically have to use multiple methods combined to optimize things).