Honestly, having to have the user type “I agree that I have verified the application i am trying to install is genuine and not a fraudulent app”

Yeah, this would be the most promising approach IMO. Whenever I was forced to write something, I did pay more attention to what that said than if I ticked a box next to it.

Maybe even have them write “I am not instructed to install this app by someone else. I am aware that following instructions to install an app this way often have fraudulent intentions”.

(Also if the language was changed recently, it should ask to write it in all languages that were set within the last 14 days or so. Otherwise the scammer will have them switch the language so they don’t understand what they’re writing)

Must’ve been the wind.

Yeah I get that but the way I experienced it is that ads can appear in a podcast in any of the following three instances:

• Podcaster themselves record the podcast, may or may not add advertisement (self-spoken in their language)
• Podcast network which the podcaster is a member of adds ad break time codes, in which later ads are inserted, dynamically based on the listener’s location (pre-spoken, usually in the local language of the listener’s location, sometimes personalized)
• The podcast player/platform (Spotify, Pocket casts, antennapod etc) adds advertisements (also pre-spoken and in local or app language, more often personalized)

The podcast player’s ads can not be distinguished from the podcast network’s ads, except that they have a higher tendency for personalized ads (given that personalization is enabled in the privacy settings) or if the player declares it as an advertisement in a place where the podcast can’t. Or if you know that a podcast is on an ad free network. Other than that, you don’t really know if it’s an ad by Spotify or the podcast’s network.

My point is that, unless your player is explicitly declaring an ad as such, you cannot diatinguish a podcast network’s ad from a player ad. The only proof I have to know it’s a network’s ad in my case is that my player is open source and ad free. If I used a closed source commercial player, I wouldn’t know from who the ad is coming when it’s in my local language.
I’m German too and got German ads on english podcasts, but I know that the player didn’t insert it, so you can never be too sure if it’s Spotify adding them either.

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TLDR: I know it because the ads were German but the podcast is in English.

That can still happen and happens to me too, despite using a no-ad FOSS player, so the ads are definitely from the podcast, not the player.
Dynamic ad insertion is absolutely a thing in podcasts. If you access/download the MP3 file on the server from a German IP address, a German ad will be put in at the specified ad break before you/your player downloads the file.

So a different language ad doesn’t mean it’s from Spotify.

(PS: By the way, using a VPN connected to a country where not many companies make podcast ads works basically like a podcast ad blocker. I route my podcast player through an Albania VPN and have like 80% less ads than before. The remainder is “classic” podcast ads that are inserted as a static part of the MP3 file, no way to get rid of those.)

Yeah, same. What a BS statement above lol

Tax them abroad then. Don’t the USA for example require Americans to tax their income even if they live and work abroad?

They could then still live in a place where you can’t enforce it, like Dubai. But that effectively results in blocking them from entering your country - and any country you have an extradition treaty with. Because you have an outstanding arrest warrant against them at some point. Plus you can confiscate any assets left behind like companies or real estate.

So at the end of the day, they’ll have to decide between a financial cap of (for example) 1 billion or being very limited in traveling. I know what I’d choose.
Surely some will still go for the ‘limited travel’ option an avoid taxation, but I suppose most rich people don’t want to be locked in a country like UAE without any actual benefit (you don’t really notice the difference between having 1 billion and 30 billion I suppose, you basically have unlimited money either way).

I guess I want a search engine that searches all the European online shops for the products I’m looking for, lets me browse and compare

Yes. This so much. I don’t want to search 100 different shops. I don’t want 100 different accounts, different accepted payment methods, different delivery methods. Something like Amazon, but not controlled by one huge corporation, would be so great.

The closest we have are price comparison sites, but once they are big enough they don’t list merchants that don’t pay them for that listing, so you often don’t find the lowest price there either.

I also want the companies to start selling their products through European online shops, instead of just Amazon.

Well in most cases, manufacturers don’t choose the vendors but the other way around. I’m sure most companies would love to be available at every single merchant existing, including European ones.

If you don’t need an item within a limited time frame, you should ask European sellers if they can get the item and sell it to you. Might not always be successful, but at the very least it helps them to know the customers’ demands better. European merchants aren’t Amazon-sized and can just store and offer every existing product so they need to know what we want.