Tesla sales have tumbled, X has had an exodus of users, and now it seems cracks are appearing among those who have turned to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system as a means of staying connected in remote areas.
While the number of Starlink users has been growing, some subscribers have been venting their frustrations over Musk’s political machinations, saying they will no longer use the high-speed satellite internet system.
Barry Nisbet, a Scottish fiddler whose Shetland business combines music with seafaring, cited Musk’s controversial salute at a Donald Trump inauguration event as one of the final straws for why he was leaving Starlink, even if it put him at a disadvantage.
Nisbet said: “I’ve been deeply uncomfortable for some time and the role he played in the US election, as well as the monopoly he has, deeply bothers me.”
Having access to a system that promises to always have availability in a crisis does lose a lot of its value if the company is run by one of the people more likely to cause a crisis
Excellent point
Well, yeah. An ISP has to be extremely highly trusted to not do anything malicious with your traffic (beyond what the state makes them do of course).
Musk and the US in general to a lesser extent can no longer be trusted to safeguard our data. I assume that EVERYTHING going through his system is logged, even the majority encrypted stuff is being saved to be decrypted at a later date once decryption methods become more viable on his supercomputers, as they always eventually do.
If you’re using a Musk service of any kind, assume everything you’re sending/receiving is fully visible to him, and his allies. That way you’ll never be surprised.
Exactly, and the way musk and his cronies are insisting for the Italian government to have all the military and gov communications on starlink is extremely concerning. Because the government is not sure on this path (it needs to be approved by the parliament, we’re not an absolute monarchy like now in the US) now they’re pushing agenda via the most annoying populist, our trump-like krasnov that’s more on extreme right than the fascists at power. If Salvini is insisting for the government to have starlink, then it means it can’t be trusted.
Starlink will be a lot harder for people to boycott than Tesla.
In rural Australia for example there just isn’t much alternative. Sure people survived there before Starlink, but you didn’t need an internet connection to start your start your tractor then (a mild exaggeration).
The guy in the article is commendable, would be hard to turn away if your business depends on it.
I’m really excited that eutel (?) has emerged as a possible alternative, although it’s not clear whether they will ever service Australia.
Mate? NBN Skymuster is Australian government owned and covers the whole continent for cheaper than StarLink.
Sure not as fast (100Mbps) as StarLink (2-400) but enough to stream content and start a tractor.
Fair enough. I hadn’t realised you could get 100Mbps with skymuster. That’s better than a lot of wired residential connections, although the latency is not great I presume.
adequate? perhaps. for most users. but a higher-latency geosync based service is not a true apples-to-apples comparison to the low orbit minisats of starlink.
Neveetheless slow internet is a viable option for some people when the alternative is fast internet owned by nazis.
