Well, if they were to start doing this on a large scale, everything would probably collapse pretty quickly.

If, for example, BlackRock were to pull its billions out of AI companies, “the market” would be terrified and smaller investors would start asking about the business model—then they’d quickly realize that it doesn’t add up at all, and they’d want to sell their shares as well, because even this giant player has lost their trust.

The result would likely be the collapse of the global economic system, since such absurd amounts of money are at stake here that a crash would make the 2003 banking crisis look like a minor slip-up.

The bitter truth is that this will almost certainly happen sooner or later—and this time, governments will no longer be able to step in to bail out the “systemically important” megacorporations, because the sums involved are so vast that even the richest countries in the world can no longer foot the bill.

I haven’t bought a single U.S. product since early 2025, and I no longer use any U.S. services as long as possible—which required me to go to great lengths to make many changes.

That’s probably more than most Americans have done to oppose their government.

No one but themselves can change it. But they don’t, precisely because of that attitude.

I argue that U.S. citizens should paralyze the country with a general strike until the regime steps down and major reforms are implemented. Otherwise, nothing at all will change.

But yes, I’ve heard all this so many times before. Including the excuses as to why a general strike supposedly isn’t possible.

What makes you think this wouldn’t undermine the credibility of the U.S.? It’s just as undignified as a cage fight in front of the White House. But hey, I can put your mind at ease—there’s no credibility left to undermine anyway, since the U.S. has already lost it all.

To the rest of the world, however, this has more to do with the fact that U.S. citizens are unable to remove from office a president who is not only incredibly corrupt but who also uses the state apparatus to make the unspeakable crimes he and his billionaire friends commit possible in the first place.

U.S. citizens may be willing to accept it when their leaders rape children and commit the most horrific war crimes. The rest of the world will not put up with it.

In the long run, this will lead to the downfall of the U.S. If you need an example of this, just look at what has become of Russia after the oligarchs took complete control - btw, this was made possible with the support of the U.S. (Clinton had even sent campaign experts at the time to help Yeltsin stay in power).

The citizens of the remaining democratic nations do not want this, and that is why they particularly despise the U.S. citizens for the fact that they stand by and just watch even in the face of these inconceivable atrocities.

It shows all too clearly that even functioning democracies are not immune to the concentrated monstrosity that the U.S. represents with its inhumane capitalism.

This is what this regime has achieved, and one almost has to be grateful to it for that: It has exposed the U.S. for what this country has been for decades.

If even the goddamn BusinessInsider comes to this conclusion, I wonder why they don’t also realize that all stock market transactions work this way today. None of this has the slightest connection to the real world anymore. Stock prices are determined purely by how many billionaires—or rather, their concentrated capital—are betting on which companies. And here’s the key: They always win, because even with the most absurd business ideas, they can drive up the price, which only crashes after the super-rich have sold their shares.

This makes it very easy to understand why the dumbest people in the world never lose money, as long as they’re rich enough.

Humanity is footing the bill for this, and it’s now becoming very clear just how high that bill is.

It’s really astonishing that this particular scam is the one stirring up US citizens, even though the matter is absolutely negligible compared to all the unbelievable corruption of this regime. Well, apparently they need something concrete—symbols, in other words—that offend their national pride in order to grasp just how criminal their government is.

Welcome to 2026, a time when piracy sites continue to receive cease-and-desist letters, but the applications that are being showered with unprecedented investments in the range of fantastrillions are also piracy ventures.

Yet another symbol of the state of the U.S. The MAGA folks are pretty good at that. Take this ridiculous military parade, the absurd cage fight in front of the White House, that goddamn ballroom—and the list goes on and on…

It’s truly unbelievable that, with all this stupid nonsense, they don’t realize how ridiculous and dim-witted they are. But hey, what else can you expect from this clown show…

In a way, it’s almost a good thing for the world, because it really makes it crystal clear just how uncivilized these wretched fascists are.

Why even bother trying anymore? This country is ruled by psychopaths trapped in their own foolish, arrogant selfishness.

The better option is to do everything we can to become independent of this fascist hellhole.

Maybe you should leave this card to the people who, unfortunately, have to put up with your dull argument. As a European, it doesn’t really affect me all too much, but it certainly affects millions of other people.

The U.S. started this war, committed the most egregious war crimes in the process, and threw the entire world into turmoil by blocking one of the most important trade routes in violation of international law.

And then U.S. citizens still complain that the pedophile mafia boss they themselves elected is costing them money.

I find that despicable.

If U.S. citizens truly have a problem with how utterly undignified, unprincipled, and corrupt their government is, perhaps they should fight back, because it’s not just the disgraceful image being projected here—it’s the downfall of the world’s most powerful economic nation.

But hey, it’s probably better to live under the thumb of other autocratic countries, whose leadership at least acts rationally.

This ridiculous spectacle only shows the world what to expect from the U.S. If the U.S. were a person, it would be an incel: that’s the kind of values and intellect this country represents.

That might appeal to billionaires, but they’re not the majority…

All there is to say about that is: Fuck the US.

I think your completely inappropriate national pride has made you completely forget what the word “bigot” means.

I’m really sorry, but you’re a rogue state—which, by the way, is a term the U.S. itself invented.

Here’s my point: You’re still defending the actions of your obviously completely degenerate regime because you see yourself as a proud American. Newsflash: Everything you believe defines your country is a lie.

There is no country in the world that harms the progress of humanity as much as the U.S.

The reason is your inhuman ideology.

This meme expresses what reasonably educated U.S. citizens think. And it’s not even the irrational MAGA cult, which has no foothold in the Fediverse. These are U.S. citizens expressing their opinions on this platform. And their opinion is that the heinous war crimes committed by their governments don’t matter—only their own well-being does.

If these are supposed to be the critical-thinking U.S. citizens, it’s very easy for me to understand how it’s possible that a serious criminal and obvious pedophile can be their president.

This meme sums up everything there is to say about the U.S.: This war is an act of aggression against a sovereign state that is completely contrary to international law. It doesn’t matter at all how inhumane the ruling regime is (if that were the case, both the U.S. and Israel would be held accountable for their crimes).

It really is all too telling: The U.S. is deliberately bombing schools, where hundreds of children are being torn to pieces by their bombs, but all U.S. citizens care about is how much of their tax money is being spent.

This country is beyond redemption; it is the embodiment of evil. Your president represents your wreched country as well as anyone could: absolute selfishness, absolute inhumanity. That is the U.S.

Edit: Just look at the downvotes even here in there Fediverse. You’d think these would be the decent Americans…

Edit:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

United Nations, Charter of the United Nations, Article 2(4), available at https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text.

Well, decisions have consequences, and the current situation is simply the result of a whole chain of decisions made by U.S. citizens. Above all, the decision to simply accept everything that is clearly making their lives worse and worse.

It’s certainly not the case that the current administration single-handedly ensured that the most serious crimes go unpunished. They’re just exploiting the existing system in a particularly shameless way. So shameless, in fact, that even those Americans who previously did nothing but wave their Stars and Stripes while rubber-stamping one neoliberal “reform” after another are now feeling a bit downcast as they realize that the U.S. is actually an absolute hellhole where only the rich enjoy a comfortable life.

Things will continue just as they are, and will even get worse, because no one is holding the “elites” in check. U.S. citizens will just accept this and keep saying that there’s nothing they can do about it. They’ll even continue to reject anyone who points out that they could fight back, because that person supposedly doesn’t understand the situation anyway and shows no sympathy for their oh-so-hopeless predicament…

Well, it’s about time people realized that the American Dream is a nightmare. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’ll draw any conclusions from this, even now.

Yes, absolutely. I completely agree with you, but unfortunately, for the reasons mentioned, I still think it’s unlikely that this welcome ruling will have any real impact.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m just being realistic. This is by no means an argument against holding the tech giants accountable—we absolutely should!

Yes, I am very familiar with the ideals of the early Internet utopians, and I consider them noble goals.

The Internet has undoubtedly advanced humanity in some ways. It has democratized knowledge and improved many things. At least for a time.

Nevertheless, in my view, its monetization according to the logic of capitalism has, in many respects, unfortunately led to the exact opposite of what the Internet utopians had in mind: Today, power is unfortunately concentrated in even fewer hands, because people, sadly, do not use the internet as a decentralized medium, but instead flock by the millions to the same centralized platforms—even when it is completely obvious who the inhuman individuals are who run them.

The best example of this is Twitter. This platform is under the exclusive control of Elon Musk. He uses it to achieve his goals, which are in complete opposition to the interests of the general public. Through it, he spreads hate, xenophobia, and misinformation. Yet people do not leave this platform.

This is just one example among countless others.

In short: It is by no means the medium itself that is harmful; it is the way people use it.

I myself have not yet lost faith in humanity, but I am also a realist, and therefore I can unfortunately only conclude that, on the whole, the internet has primarily served to make the exploitative elites even more powerful.

In the broader public sphere, in my opinion, it has unfortunately not led to the democratization of resources and knowledge, but rather to centralization and autocracy.

In my opinion, this will soon result in a civilizational regression—this seems to me the inevitable consequence of the widespread use of LLMs, as they will certainly be abused by those in power, which, in my view, is already happening. Again, Musk, with his blunt approach, is an illustrative example of this as well.

I’m afraid this is a pretty pessimistic outlook, but unfortunately, I have no reason to believe that optimism would be appropriate.

I don’t think this can be handled as easily as with cookies or third-party connections that require consent, because Google apparently plans to eventually replace the traditional search engine results pages (SERPs) entirely with an AI chat interface.

In that case, they would have to offer a completely different product just for Germany, or leave this market altogether. Neither option is likely to be viable for Google.

Setting up the AI chat so that it doesn’t provide dangerous answers is, in my opinion, also out of the question, since this can never be guaranteed due to the way LLMs work.