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Comment by Telemakhos | Hacker News Reader

Starlink now offers direct-to-cellphone 4G coverage, no extra equipment needed.

An extremely centralized network like Starlink depending on the wishes of its owner is the opposite of freedom. We need sovereign alternatives.

Don't get me wrong, but somebody has to operate an exit node and somehow there needs to be a consensus on the protocol + routing.

If the network is only earth bound fixed wireless, the distance might be small enough that the state comes for the operator itself... This raises the cost of running this network from just money to life threat.

Getting many open source satellites up in orbit might not be feasible.

Agreed that nothing is fully trustless on Earth. The point isn’t eliminating operators, it’s avoiding single points of coercion and failure. One exit can be shut down but many exits and type of networks (includong more alternative infra like the Guifi.net’s meshnetworks in Spain for example) across jurisdictions raise the cost from “call a CEO” to sustained political pressure or directly a CEO that has control over an entire network and its also a billionaire CEO with a messiah complex, far-right leanings and tendency to drug abuse.

Absolute decentralization is impossible. Reducing capture and increasing resilience is not. That’s a meaningful difference.

Said that, I’m happy with Starlink as an extra actor for a healthy mix of ISPs and networks that brings resilience.

Sovereign like one controlled by the Iranian government?

That’s a false dichotomy. Saying Starlink isn’t sovereign doesn’t imply support for state-controlled networks. Criticizing corporate centralization ≠ endorsing government control.

The goal is systems where authority is fragmented enough that capture (by states or corporations) is structurally hard

positive change will never happen as long as the workers require the owner's property to help make the change, because the owners can control what happens on their property.

we need a mutual aid web services (MAWS). a sharedflare. everybody's link. etc.

this was an insight of fannie lou hamer and other freedom fighters from the civil rights movement after they had their food stolen/destroyed/poisoned. they were focused on food and education and healthcare but the idea can be applied to technology infrastructure, too.

Would starlink be reliable in countries where it's leadership wasn't politically aligned though?

This has already been established with Ukraine.

It’s weird there and seems to be running now.

Though Russian troops have been pictured with it too.

If the device is in Ukraine, how would it distinguish between russians or ukranians using it in the same country?

Like, decide.

That’s very clearly a problem. But that wasn’t the one Musk weighed in on, he just blocked Ukraine at some points in time.

A government may introduce a list of identifiers of devices allowed to operate in their territory. With relatively frequent verification to prevent the use of captured devices.

Not a bad idea, but I doubt they know how many they have or their citizens have. Let alone serial numbers

IIUC the critical use is by military units, so a process to list all the serial numbers shall be quite straightforward

Starlink is Musk. That‘s not reliable

I know you hate it, but X and Starlink are the only channels giving us information on Iran right now. If X was censored (like many leftists are advocating), we wouldn't know anything about those riots.

What are Iranians posting on X that the left would want censored?

People rising against a regime that the left sympathizes with, obviously.

Iranians describing how Isam destroyed their country within one decade (the UK establishment is very unconfortable with that truth, for some reaslon...).

Iranians calling on Trump and thanking Elon. That tends to make leftists mad.

>That tends to make leftists mad.

Being mad is one thing, but demanding X censor that speech is another. I'm not really involved in this debate so I haven't seen anything like that. Can you provide some examples of any prominent people on the left calling for X to censor that speech?

Starmer, T.Breton (former EU commissioner, the one who got denied VISA to the US going forward), google them with "X ban" and you'll have all the results you want. Similar with many other EU political figures.

I see news articles about Starmer wanting to ban X for allowing deepfakes and sexualized images of children, which seems reasonable to me. Presumably if X took steps other companies have to prevent those images, the ban would be off the table.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-x-elon-musk-grok-ai-sexualiz...

As for T. Breton, it seems they're wanting X to abide by the EU's Digital Services Act, which requires transparency in how a company tries to combat disinformation among other things (protection of children's exposure to dangerous content being one of them).

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/12/24/us-visa-ban-ta...

I still don't see where the Iranian protests or regime change there would factor into this.

Yeah thanks, so they want to ban X and I was right.

Why is it so difficult for you to understand: we don’t want your x shit in Europe. Since when is the American president so concerned about the business of a single man, who’s an immigrant himself? Anna Paulina Luna, she’s a fucking immigrant too, or a daughter of one. You have all lost your mind there in the US. Why should we be even concerned with what you want if your leader is ready to send tanks because someone said “no”. Fuck people who think like you. Take your propaganda and kindly fuck off.

"We" ? The 100 million active users in Europe, making X one of the most downloaded app on the continent, probably beg to differ.

Again, typical socialism reflexes: you dont like X, so instead f just not using it, you feel like you need to send us the police to make us not use it...

PS: do you have short and blue hair ? Just a question, don't get too triggered.

You know, not everyone on this site has an absolutist binary opinion on the Elon. Some people can give him credit for what he gets right, while simultaneously calling bullshit on his bullshit.

Starlink is now the only way to get internet in Iran bro.

I heard somewhere.

It’s great that starlink is there, but it can still be shut down on the whim of its owner as seen in the past. So hurray for starlink! (unless the opportunistic tides of politics change)

It's apparently being jammed in Iran from what I've heard/read, though I don't know how reliable that is.

Cant be jammed.

The dishes can be found and disabled ofc.

If it could be "jammed" like that Russia would "jam" the Ukranian ones.

Putin found a way of achieving that at a couple of points in time.

Why can't it be jammed? Can't any radio signal can be jammed by a stronger one?

The way it's been presented in other threads is that the narrow beam makes it quite difficult to jam at scale.

> If it could be "jammed" like that Russia would "jam" the Ukranian ones.

They did, though, in a few places? It was reported as such anyway, again this is not something I'm an expert on.

You do still need an ISP playing ball with Starlink for that to work.

You need Musk to play ball. Starlink worked fine when Afghanistan turned off the internet. There’s a lot of rhetoric about the evil musk internet there - the government don’t care about things like vsat, it’s very specifically framed as anti America and anti Musk

Remember the people enforcing it (going to businesses and checking their connections) are thick as two short planks.

Iran I expect has a more effective enforcement than the taliban, but the principal is the same - starlink works fine in these countries and downlinks elsewhere (Europe in the case of Afghanistan). GEO providers like Inmarsat downlink in places like the Netherlands.

It’s all rather meaningless as only a tiny number of people have access to these systems, compared to access to the Internet via phones.

Musk has to agree though - and he was shutting this down at various points in Ukraine over his support for Russian.

Ideally Starlink wouldn’t be involved.

The situation was more complicated than that, there was pressure from the US gov (itar) and desire not escalate the situation at the time.

Now that the geopolitical situation has changed and funding concerns mostly alleviated, there are 200k terminals in use in Ukraine.

https://circleid.com/posts/starlink-in-ukraine-what-three-ye...

He took a very public approach to navigating that and while that would be on brand, it’s wild. He seem to have been directly communicating with Putin.

Disconnecting Ukraine at key points in battles would fit with the current administration’s flip flopping approach, but again he is at the front of it and on Twitter slagging off supposed American allies.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/why-is-elon-musk-talki...

This may all get weird again as the US seems to have blundered into conflict with Russia over Venezuela so maybe the Ukraine may see some support.

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