Microsoft Corp. co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has been regularly and erroneously linked to misinformation about supposed depopulation schemes.
We’ve previously debunked claims that he said “at least 3 billion people need to die” to mitigate climate change, that a photo showed a “Center for Global Population Reduction” at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters, and that he discussed using vaccines to control population growth during a 2010 TED Talk.
Now an image circulating on social media is being characterized as showing a 2011 newspaper that “contains an article by Bill Gates called ‘Depopulation Through Forced Vaccination.’ Gates believes this would be the most ‘environmentally friendly solution.’”
An Instagram post sharing this image was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The image of the newspaper, The Sovereign Independent — which Reuters reports consisted of “opinion pieces about well-known conspiracy theories and has since folded — is authentic. It’s from June 2011.
But Gates didn’t author it.
Rachel Windeer did, according to the byline that’s not quite visible in the Instagram post.
We rate claims Gates wrote this False.