Annalice Ni

INFO 270
BS Detection Project

From Misinformation to Meme:

Investigating the Bill Gates microchip and COVID-19 vaccination rumor

Context

Bill and Melinda Gates are high-profile philanthropists, especially in the space of global
health. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
has committed more than 1.8 billion dollars in research into the COVID-19 vaccine according to
the Foundation’s COVID-19 FAQ page. This commitment is unsurprising given the foundation’s
historical record of donation towards healthcare in lower-income countries. Bill Gates has also
been personally very outspoken about the benefits of getting the COVID-19 vaccines. These
endeavors by Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation have fueled a rumor that Bill
Gates funded the development of COVID-19 vaccines to implant a microchip into the recipients
of the vaccine and control / track them in the future.
The claim may have specifically started on March 18th, 2020 in the subreddit “Ask Me
Anything,” where Gates stated that “Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show
who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”
Gates was referring to an online health database that could keep track of people who have
received the vaccine (like a vaccine passport). An alternative news source called BioHackInfo
quickly followed with an article on March 19th, reporting that Gates planned to use microchip
implants in humans to combat the COVID-19 vaccine. A viral YouTube video about the subject
(now removed) was circulated soon after. The rumors started circling primarily within
conspiracy groups initially in late March to early April of 2020, but quickly reached a broader
public audience.

Figure 1. A post in a Facebook conspiracy group about the COVID-19 vaccine being a way to implant microchips funded by Bill
Gates. The YouTube video the post links to has since been taken down by YouTube, but the Facebook post is still accessible.
 This claim has been debunked as early as March 2020 on reputable news and fact
checking sites such as Reuters, FactCheck.org, and Snopes. However, the rumor continued
spiraling into pop culture and alternate news since the time that it was debunked.

How far did the rumor spread?

The primary sites of the Bill Gates microchip rumor spreading were social media
platforms like Facebook and Twitter, content platforms like YouTube, and alternate news
channels / sites. The misinformation was also spread in a more official capacity by public
officials at the time.
The original article from the BioHackInfo alternative news outlet is still up on the
internet and appeared in the first page of a Google search when I used the keywords
“biohackinfo bill gates microchip.” When I searched “bill gates microchip” or something that
didn’t include the specific news source, the articles on the first page of the search included
articles debunking the false claim, so this false article was not easily accessed on Google
without using specific keywords. Most people who were curious about the rumor would likely
need to know more about the specific source to see the article on a search engine.
The article claims that Bill Gates would “launch human-implantable capsules” to track
who is or is not vaccinated against COVID-19. The comment thread of the article is mostly filled
with people who genuinely believe that they will be injected with a microchip if they get the
vaccine and condemn Bill Gates for his involvement in the vaccine development.

Figure 2. The comment section of the BioHackInfo news article about Bill Gates inserting microchips through vaccines.
 Shortly after the creation of the Bill Gates microchip rumor in conspiracy groups, the
White House correspondent for the conservative news outlet Newsmax, Emerald Robinson,
tweeted about Gates and claimed that he was going to use the vaccines to track people.
Robinson’s account has since been suspended and the tweet was taken down. Additionally, Ron
Paul, a former Congressman from Texas, shared a video on Facebook that claims that Bill Gates
wants to rule the world through his vaccine efforts, using microchipping or otherwise.

Figure 3. Ron Paul's Facebook post about Bill Gates microchip conspiracy.

The YouTube video that this clip is cut from has been taken down from the platform, but
Ron Paul’s Facebook post is still up and accessible and has gained at least 134 thousand views.
Facebook has not flagged the post as misinformation as they do with many other COVID
misinformation posts, even though the person publishing it is a public figure with a large
audience. I found that this was a common theme throughout my search for where the
misinformation spread. There would be a Facebook post that links a YouTube video talking
about the Bill Gates microchip vaccine rumor, but almost all YouTube video links link to videos
that have been taken down already. The Facebook posts are usually still visible even more than
a year after most of them were posted.
Ron Paul wasn’t the only public figure to spread misinformation about Bill Gates and the
COVID vaccine as Roger Stone, a prolific Republican campaign advisor, suggested that Bill Gates
may have “played some role in creation and spread” of coronavirus on the radio program “The
Answer” on 970 AM. He further mentioned that the mandatory vaccinations and microchipping
that have been untested were unreliable, and he would not condone them.
Other high-profile politicians and celebrities also spread this misinformation by either
blatantly accepting / not denying it or jokingly supporting it, further spreading the false
information virally. Although misinformation can spread on social media virally even without
input from famous individuals, this rumor was bolstered by the individuals with a large
audience who continued promoting the false claim that Bill Gates would inject microchips into
the public through the COVID-19 vaccine.
On Facebook, many public conspiracy theory investigation groups (Figure 1) have posts
claiming that Bill Gates was implanting microchips that remain on the platform. These posts are
not particularly easy to find on a timeline as the user would need to be integrated in those
groups already to see them without explicitly searching on Facebook for “Bill Gates microchip
conspiracy” as I did. On Twitter, there were less posts that legitimately claimed the rumor to be
true and more that satirized the rumor or joked about people who believed it to be true.
However, since the peak of the Bill Gates rumor was around April 2020, many posts that spread
misinformation have likely been taken down by now.
Why did this rumor spread?

I believe that the Bill Gates microchip fake news story has spread so far, even after being
debunked, because it combines a fear of ultra-wealthy elites being in control with the anti-
vaccination movement, which is a very powerful combination on the internet and especially on
social media.
Even without the Gates’s involvement in the development and funding of the COVID-19
vaccination, antivaxxers are still at large on social media about vaccinations from the flu shot to
measles. This community already existed for a long time, and it was practically inevitable that
they would continue their endeavors when a high-profile vaccine like the COVID-19 vaccine was
released.

Figure 4. Chart displaying rise in popularity of anti-vaccination accounts.

According to the chart above created by the BBC, the anti-vaccination sentiment on
social media may have grown in the past 4 years. One hypothesis for why this is the case could
be the relevance of the COVID-19 vaccine in the past few years. The spotlight on the COVID-19
pandemic and the vaccination development created an opportunity for anti-vaccination groups
to reach a broader audience in spreading misinformation about vaccines.
Similarly, the distrust for the wealthy elite in the USA and around the world has been a
sentiment since the pre-Internet age (i.e. Illuminati, Freemasons, etc.). Illuminati conspiracy
theories have existed since the disbanding of the “original Illuminati” group in the 1700s and
have thrived in popular culture and conspiracy groups alike since then. These rumors involve
individuals ranging from the ultra-wealthy such as Bill Gates to high-profile entertainers like
Beyonce and Jay Z. Although genuine belief in organizations like the Illuminati generally resides
in conspiracy groups and outside of mainstream culture, the more grounded idea that ultra-
wealthy people have a large impact on world events still exist and reasonably so.
 In particular, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has faced criticism for influencing
global health policy too much as a private organization and not putting resources in the
countries that need it the most despite the Foundation’s advertising. Given the impact of the
Foundation on real-world healthcare, it’s understandable how the public may perceive projects
that the Gates work on as being a push towards control. However, there is still a huge
difference between legitimately researched criticism of the Foundation’s actions versus a claim
that Bill Gates as an individual is trying to gain control over the public through microchips in
vaccines.
Aside from the subjects of this microchip rumor, the social media companies that
people spread misinformation on also play a large part in the continued spread of the rumor
even after it was debunked. As mentioned previously, some Facebook posts and videos and
YouTube videos have been either flagged for content or taken down completely since they
were posted. This action is a great sign since it slows the spread of misinformation, but I was
still able to find many unflagged posts about the Bill Gates microchip rumors in specific
Facebook conspiracy groups that have not been taken down yet. I’m not sure if this is due to
the post being in a group and possibly under different content moderation policies or if there
was an oversight in the policy completely. More work in content moderation and
misinformation detection needs to be done by social media and online content platforms to
ensure that rumors such this one can’t spread virally and affect peoples’ actions in the real
world since public health is at stake.
Luckily, many Facebook and Twitter posts about COVID-19 vaccines and Bill Gates’s
microchips seem to make fun of the rumor that Bill Gates has implanted microchips into the
vaccines, especially after the widespread distribution of vaccines in the USA. Many of the
individuals posting about the subject say that they have gotten the “Bill Gates microchip
vaccine,” and comments in these types of post consist of people who also understand that the
topic is being joked about. These individuals are still getting vaccinated and trust the vaccine’s
efficacy over rumors about Bill Gates implanting microchips or any other vaccine rumors
floating around the internet, which is great to see.
To many internet users, the misinformation that Bill Gates was putting controlling
microchips into COVID-19 vaccines probably sounded like a fake story or a meme from start to
finish. However, the time it took from when the rumors started circulating around the height of
the vaccine distribution period to when the rumors became a mainstream meme was still
damaging to those who were already vaccine hesitant or antivax. This type of news can be
funny or outlandish in hindsight, but social media companies and users still need to be vigilant
about the impact that sharing fake news stories like this one can have on society.
Citations

Fact checking sources

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/conspiracy-theory-misinterprets-goals-of-gates-
foundation/
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-coronavirus-bill-gates-micr-idUSKBN21I3EC
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-video-microchip-coronavirus-idUSKBN22R2GS
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-gates-id2020/
https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648

Bill Gates official sources

Gates Foundation COVID FAQ: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/articles/covid19-faq

Bill Gates Reddit AMA:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_m
elinda_gates/

Misinformation sources

FB conspiracy group post:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/150671191753274/permalink/1569620149858364
FB Fake Bill Gates video:
https://www.facebook.com/1627130469/videos/10222330191916805/
Ron Paul FB video:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?
ref=search&v=839940293178445&external_log_id=22d859ad-6f1e-4cb0-a2e6-
2dd7fcce568a&q=bill%20gates%20microchip
BioHackInfo article: https://biohackinfo.com/news-bill-gates-id2020-vaccine-implant-covid-19-
digital-certificates/
Roger Stone on Bill Gates microchip: https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/roger-stone-bill-gates-
may-have-created-coronavirus-to-microchip-people/

Chart sources

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-56047409

Other sources

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/19/8624675/what-is-illuminati-meaning-conspiracy-beyonce
https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/bill-gates-foundation-covax-botched-global-vaccine-
rollout.html