A tech tycoon has been responded to criticism on social media for offering a woman $100,000 (£82,700) to remove her mask during a flight.
Steve Kirsch posed the proposition to a woman on a Delta flight that he would pay her the generous sum in exchange for her to remove her face mask.
He even posted a selfie on the Delta jet with an accompanying caption detailing the offer and was labelled a "creepy liar" by social media users.
He then defended himself in an interview, stating that he was not aggressively going after people and that his comments were taken out of context.
The incident occurred after airlines and airports dropped mask mandates following a court ruling in April 2022, although many travellers still choose to wear face coverings on flights.
Kirsch is a Silicon Valley veteran worth approximately $230 million, credited with inventing one of the first versions of the optical mouse back in 1980.
He co-founded Frame Technology Corp which was bought out by Adobe in 1995 and then went on to create Infoseek and then sold it to Disney in 1999.
The 67-year-old is also a known anti-masker and anti-vaccine advocate who created a research fund for alternative COVID treatments in 2020, donating $1 million to the venture.
He spreads misinformation about the pandemic online and regularly shares articles sceptical of COVID vaccinations and masks on his Twitter profile.
After receiving heavy criticism from social media users over the incident, the mogul then insisted that his proposition to the woman was hypothetical and that he was not aggressively going after people.
He also claimed that he and the woman were having a friendly conversation and that he was merely picking her brain about her preference to wear a mask.
The anti-masker and anti-vaccine advocate maintained that the encounter was not serious and that he was not trying to cause harm or offend anyone.
He told Inside Edition: "It was a hypothetical question, 'How much would it take for you to remove your mask?' I said, 'If I offered you $100...$1,000'...then I upped it to $100,000.
"People think I am aggressively going after people, I’m not doing that at all. We're having a friendly conversation."
The incident sparked a heated debate on social media about mask mandates, vaccines, and the behaviour of wealthy individuals, with many people being critical of Kirsch's behaviour and comments.
Some called him a "creepy liar" and an "entitled mansplainer," while others said he was spreading misinformation about vaccines and the pandemic.
Someone said: "What a jackass thing to do. She paid for First Class and still had to deal with an idiot in her personal space."
Some users also criticized the airline for allowing such behaviour on their flights, but others defended Kirsch and said they would have taken the money themselves.
Another user said: "Even if it was GUARANTEED I'd get COVID I'd take the $100k, depending on where I was going."
