What is the purpose of an article about monopolistic business practices?

Very recently, Apple became a two trillion dollar company and a single man's net worth is 10% of that. Meanwhile, over a million in his country have recently filed for unemployment.

I really don't understand the leap from the article to ridiculous conspiracies (and derailing the discussion).

>the current "Bill Gates invented coronavirus" conspiracy nonsense

I haven't heard that particular conspiracy yet. This editorial does however add additional context to the fawning coverage that Gates has gotten recently as a supposed selfless, benevolent philanthropist and opinion leader during the pandemic.

See the "Opinion" link near the top left of the article? And just to its right is the linked name "John Naughton" with a photo? When I click the link with Naughton's name it takes me here:

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/johnnaughton

Apparently Naughton writes about technology in the Guardian. I think it's fair to his theme is something like "public watchdog on the tech industry."

This piece was a throwback to 25 years ago so I can only assume that it was a slow "tech crimes against humanity" week for Naughton.

One thing that the media seem to have totally missed is that Gates was fairly late to recognise the role of face masks in helping to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Initially in Feb he was all about vaccines [1], then in a revealing interview on the Ellen show in mid April he mentions them in passing [2], next in late April he suggests a role for them in easing the lockdown [3], and finally in June (in a somewhat revisionist interview) he castigates the american public for not wanting to wear them [4]

[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/How-to-respond-to-COVID-19

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oEcxMfwJnw

[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/26/business/bill-gates-coron...

[4] https://www.fastcompany.com/90520896/how-do-we-beat-coronavi...

Contrast this with a number of medical experts in Asia whose simple advice back in January basically nailed it, including the need for mask wearing, eg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcbJdRb6mds

It's a cautionary tale that even the richest philanthropists with the best advisers can fall considerably short, and may not even be aware of it...

If could be due to videos of him that show him saying how a 20:1 return on vaccines are a good investment (& presumably how his personal wealth almost doubled since ms days), as well as several citations of where he (& his wife) point the finger at over population as a problem, stating how a 10% reduction of global population would help.

His father was a known supporter of eugenics, apparently.

There are several memes out there highlighting the obvious: He's not a medical doctor.

I'd recommend watching the series on him by the Corbett Report [0] who always carefully cite original sources for the information presented.

[0] https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/

Since this is probably a worthless thread: imagine doing as much as Gates did, and then suddenly becoming the bogeyman of the dumbest conspiracy thinkers. How the hell does that even happen.

Well he is indirectly responsible for all the malware that propagated through Windows because of the well-known fact that Windows is a closed source, and therefore vulnerable system. Windows 10 has better mitigation against such threats, but is not bulletproof by any means. This man has contributed to the recent wave of ransomware attacks that have plagued IT departments.