Yes, that’s clear. I didn’t mean to imply that anyone here is getting paid, except for the operators of instances and Foss developers—and they presumably get far too little for their efforts.

Yes, ads would be unavoidable, but there would be the possibility of distributing the revenue more fairly. Otherwise, the only option would be to accept donations to accounts, but no one would likely use that. I’ll say it again: ads are not an option in the Fediverse, not even in a transparent way, and not even though ads not only finance the internet, but have also traditionally been a major source of funding for things like quality journalism (subscriptions have never been the main source of income here). Nevertheless, it remains a fact that good content costs time and skill, and therefore usually money. Without monetization methods, there will always be a shortage of content that is more than just reposts from elsewhere. So it seems to me to be an unsolvable problem. But of course, I also completely understand why the Fediverse fundamentally rejects monetization—at least in the form of ads.

That’s the downside of having few users. In terms of basic principles, Lemmy is no different from other social media apps: The lion’s share just consumes, few comment, hardly anyone posts anything. In fact, it’s anything but a community approach, but rather the merit of a few “power users” who provide the vast majority of the content.

In addition, there are no monetization opportunities whatsoever. Many people see this as a good thing, which is understandable, but in fact there are perfectly normal people who try to make a living from their content or at least want to earn some extra money. I don’t think there will ever be any understanding for this on this platform. Therefore, there will never be such content here, because without monetization opportunities, there is no motivation to provide such content here instead of on mainstream social media platforms. I can imagine that the Fediverse could develop remuneration models that are much fairer and more sustainable, but this will fail from the outset due to ideology.

I think that’s a shame, but I think there is 0 chance this could even be discussed in the Fediverse.

Unfortunately, in Germany we are also facing major problems with the resurgence of fascism. Here, it takes the form of the AfD these days, a right-wing extremist party that basically stands for the same inhumane ideology as MAGA: hatred, greed and blatant stupidity.

I attribute the popularity of these damn fascists primarily to the fact that Europe uses the same US social media platforms, which are controlled by the same billionaires. Another reason may be that Europe is also experiencing an economic downturn, and the AfD, like MAGA, promises a return to “the golden days,” which is of course a blatant lie, especially since the AfD is a neoliberal party that, like MAGA, exclusively pursues policies that benefit the super-rich - yet somehow people here don’t seem to see through this either.

So I’m afraid we can’t help out, especially since the world today is a completely different place, if only because of nuclear weapons. Sorry :(

I’m afraid I phrased that incorrectly: In Germany, the US president is despised by the vast majority of rational-minded people, but unfortunately there are also many completely brainless, hateful people here who vote for a party that stands for exactly the same Nazi bullshit.

Unpopular seems to me to be quite an understatement. I can only report back from Germany: here, he is deeply despised by most people.

It is quite a feat to save people from embarrassment, namely from a golden abomination of trashiness, through another embarrassment such as this.

Let anyone say they don’t make progress - quite the contrary: every day brings new lows.

Indeed, and a murderer

This was all foreseeable long in advance:

We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.

Pete Hegseth [Source]

It is, after all, a criminal regime. Anyone who supports it is complicit and should bear in mind that it will not be those at the top who bear the consequences.

We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.

Pete Hegseth [Source]

What do you expect to change for the world? The US has been a plutocracy for decades. Really not all too much difference to states like Russia - just another approach. The people in power did whatever they wanted to do for a very long time. Now they are just changing their modus operandi and giving up the pretense. Why? - well, because they can.

The only thing that worries me is that they could lose control over their straw man in the White House, but I think that’s unlikely because he’s much more like Hermann Göring than Adolf Hitler. He may be a hopeless narcissist, but he’s so incredibly greedy that filthy lucre and indulging his perversions are probably more important to him than real power, because power means commitment, and he’d rather go golfing.

Wow, the US really is just a complete clown show - the usual ridiculousness has increased many times over since January, and so has the greed. But yet: there is hardly any serious resistance to the obvious establishment of a dictatorship. Well, the citizens are probably so used to living in an unjust state that they think it wouldn’t make any difference.

For everyone else in the world, it probably won’t really make a difference, except that they’ll have to deal with another mentally ill despot. But I think that despite all the regime’s open organized crime, despite its brutish violence, the majority of US citizens still don’t understand what it means to live in a dictatorship.

We can only hope that the US will not resort to excessive use of its inflated military apparatus when the country inevitably continues to decline. Given the viciousness of the regime, this is unfortunately to be expected.

It would be great if the Americans could finally lock these criminals away, but to be honest, I gave up hope of that a long time ago.

Is “tariff” now the new “woke”? A term without any meaning that Republicans throw around just to give their brainless followers a starting point from which they can see their deluded fantasies as seemingly rooted in reality?

So something along the lines of: “100 percent tariffs will teach you what happens when you are woke” or some other stupid crap like that.

It’s hard to believe, but somehow US news are getting more absurd by the day, even though it should have reached rock bottom long ago…

Pretty much everything “New World Order”: One of the oldest and most common labels for conspiracy theories that claim a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world under a totalitarian one-world government.

Edit: Although there are certainly some signs of such conspiracies today, the absurd thing about many of these theories is that they are often used by right-wing extremists to gain support for ideas that are very close to the goals of the conspirators described in such theories.

The best example is probably MAGA with its “cabal” of child molesters. Now that their leader is president, it is telling that MAGA has gone quiet on this conspiracy theory - and no one there is talking anymore about the fact that influential billionaires are becoming richer and more influential under the MAGA regime.

I have always found such things interesting, as they themselves give rise to conspiracy theories.

Given the scale of the problem, one could certainly speak of organized crime, which makes the US a banana republic—I think that sums it up.

I never liked him with his canned laughter sitcom and his conformist suburban humor—a bit like a pop song that hasn’t aged well, the kind that was successful in its day but is so unoriginal, boring, and unimaginative that no one wants to hear it anymore.

Yea, that guy in particular seems exactly like the kind of unscrupulous moron who would do just that.

It was only a matter of time before they tried to tackle Wikipedia. Fascism relies on misinformation—that’s why knowledge is its enemy.

But he certainly can raise prices by 1500% once this pedo thing is over — probably a Freudian slip — he will probably do everything humanly possible to increase prices by that percentage since the lobby offered him and his cronies good terms.

Trump cannot and will not lower drug prices. That’s just another lie… Oh, how about the Eppstein files? He could certainly publish those, but he won’t for obvious reasons – almost as obvious as the reasons for not lowering drug prices.

Presumably, his supporters are trying to find a way out without having to admit to themselves that they have supported an unscrupulous monster. That is probably why they are now pretending that they did not know what has actually been known since the 1990s.

This allows people to maintain their identity and not have to worry that their worldview is fundamentally wrong. They can then move straight on to the next cult leader that preaches pretty much the same hateful ideology.