1233
submitted 2 months ago by 101@feddit.org to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 61 points 2 months ago

I was excited about starlink when it was announced, but already it's way too expensive, already bows to actual totalitarians and isn't affordable on the ocean and not available in remote places without a license.

And with more satellite constellations planned by amazon and others, it seems the kessler syndrome is just a question of time.

[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago

already bows to actual totalitarians

Care to elaborate?

[-] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 11 points 2 months ago

Turkey and Russia. It's clear that profit seeking corporations would bow, but then Elon screams bloody murder when reactionary forces in Brazil manipulating social media get censored.

[-] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago

I feel like that explanation is missing a verb or something.

[-] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 8 points 2 months ago

To bow, or bow down or kneel for. But I'm not going to google that for you haha. The basic problem is that starlink theoretically has immense power so it becomes a political tool. He bows to those ones but not to legitimate democratic interests.

Especially once starlink and others can make landline based internet connections obsolete by pricing them out - which they are not currently doing though, but it seems only a matter of time with competition. Basically we could get to a situation where there are only like 2 or 3 internet provider practically controlling internet globally.

[-] Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago

They won't be able to price landline based connections out as long as they have to replace their satellites every 5 years. I wouldn't be surprised if they're running at a loss currently.

[-] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

I'm pretty sure they ran the numbers for potential profits and determined it's a goldmine - in the long run. Maybe they'll need to increase the lifespan of satellites. Their internal launch costs are pretty low already. Amazon wants to build it's own constellation and is building new glen partially because they can't get launch slots from SpaceX. I'm sure you can find some numbers to do some napkin math.

Theoretically they can serve the whole world with internet without requiring only minimal land based infrastructure. That is a gigantic market they can reach. And incredibly power to wield for such a psycho.

Another strange case is high-frequency trading on stock exchanges - because light is faster in the vacuum of space compared to fiberglass they can trade on the stock exchanges around the world like nobody else can. Not sure how much money that makes.

[-] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago

When I searched "Elon bows to Turkey" I got this story about Twitter censoring some tweets during the Turkish election... Is that what you're talking about?

[-] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Yeah. Which is in stark contrast to Musk's rhetoric in Brazil, which had a legal court order for censoring. Maybe Ukraine/Russia wasn't the best example. My point is that it's immense power. In the hands of a soulless corporation it's bad enough but an outright fascist like Musk is much worse.

[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

What about Turkey and Russia? Starlink doesn't work in Russia.

[-] nomous@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Follow the news so we don't have to catch you up.

[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Replies like this from people like you is why social media sucks. Thanks for your contribution on keeping it so.

[-] Sparky 2 points 2 months ago

Wouldn't it be nice if those sattelites would work together instead of against eachother. What if Amazon worked together with starlink, and the other companies offering internet so there would be less sattelites in the sky. Why does every sat internet company need their own fleet of sattelites

[-] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

Well presumably to make more money lol. The good thing is that there will at least be some competition to bring prices down and keep service quality up. A monopoly would be bad. But of course that leads to more satellites. This really shows how our capitalist system can't really make rational decisions that are for the benefit of humanity. Ideally we'd have a separate economic institution to regulate industry like this under direct democratic control.

this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
1233 points (100.0% liked)

Microblog Memes

5821 readers
1639 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS