For every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people do not.
Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Judged as of 2007-06-07. 'Access to this technology' means access to computers or the Internet; use the share of the world population who were Internet users (or had computer access) in 2007, from ITU, World Bank or similar data. A 1-to-5 ratio means about 16.7% have access. True: the share is about 14–20%. Mostly true: 12–14% or 20–25%. Mixed: 9–12% or 25–30%. Mostly false: 6–9% or 30–40%. False: under 6% or over 40%.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (2)
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E1 Table Data - Internet users for the World FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), citing World Bank · 19 September 2024
“| 2007-01-01 | 20.3000000000000000 |”
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E2 Internet Users Global Policy Forum
“| 2007 | 1,319 | 20.0 |”
Reasoning
E1 is FRED's World Bank series titled "Internet users for the World". It gives 20.3 for 2007, which most plausibly reads as a percentage of the world population, though the quote shows no unit. E2 is a table published by Global Policy Forum. Its 2007 row gives 1,319 million users and 20.0 in what appears to be the percentage column. A share of about 20% falls at the edge between the "true" band (14–20%) and the "mostly true" band (20–25%). The World Bank figure of 20.3% puts it in the mostly-true band: the claimed 1-to-5 ratio is roughly right but understates access a little. Neither quote includes its unit labels, which adds some uncertainty, but both sources point to about 20%.
Cite this claim
Bill Gates, “For every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people do not.” (said 7 June 2007). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_2fc0061eef07, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_2fc0061eef07
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
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Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.