Did Bill Gates discuss the consumption of bugs, the potential threat of killer robots or concerns about COVID-19 and the vaccine not being sufficiently lethal in a video shared from COP28? No, that's not true: The original video Gates shared on his social media was altered; the edited version conveyed a message entirely different from his original statement.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) by @ivinkasassi on TikTok on December 31, 2023. The video shows Gates allegedly saying:
I'm here in Dubai, and of course, I flew in on my private jet. Very, very important meeting. The issue of you peasants eating bugs will be discussed at length, that's never gotten the attention it deserves. The issue of COVID-19 not killing off enough poor people and my vaccines not weeding out the rest of you bastards, which is a tragedy of course. We'll talk about using killer robots next, that will absolutely solve that problem.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Jan 19 09:36:34 2024 UTC)
The original video was posted on Gates' Instagram and YouTube channel on December 1, 2023 (archived here and here). In it, he says:
I'm here in Dubai. This is COP28, very, very important meeting. The issue of health and climate will be discussed at length. That's never gotten the attention it deserves. The issue of food systems and how with climate change a lot of farmers aren't able to grow their crops, which is a tragedy for them. We'll talk about using innovation to absolutely solve that problem and a lot of great young companies are here, and the big companies will come. We'll see a lot of partnerships that come out of this. So it's a good milestone in a very big challenge.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28 (archived here), was held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from November 30 to December 13, 2023. The COP has been an annual gathering since 1992 (archived here), with a significant milestone in 2015 when countries committed to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions (archived here) and limiting global average warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. In the U.N. climate negotiations, unanimous support from all participating countries (archived here) is necessary to pass deals.
The YouTube account for COP28 shared a video featuring Gates addressing the assembly (archived here). However, the video did not refer to the purported proposal mentioned in the video on TikTok. Gates' blog, GatesNotes (archived here), does not discuss any of the topics mentioned above either.
