Comment by cjkaminski
3 hours ago
Unfortunate, yes.
Futile? No.
Remember that AT&T once had a firm grip over human communication. That didn't last.
Remember that AOL once had a firm grip over how a massive percentage of the population accessed the internet. That didn't last.
Elon Musk currently has a firm grip on social media (via X) and internet access (via Starlink). This too will not last.
X and Starlink don't even remotely have a "firm grip" over the social media or Internet access markets. They have many active competitors.
> X and Starlink don't even remotely have a "firm grip" over the social media or Internet access markets. They have many active competitors.
Starlink's market isn't "Internet access" in general. Anywhere you can get fibre, fibre will be faster and cheaper. For many use cases a cell tower works better too, if you are in its coverage area.
Starlink's market is "high bandwidth / low latency Internet access no matter where you are on Earth". And for that it is by far the market leader. Its closest competitors are way behind – second place Amazon's Kuiper has under 400 satellites in orbit, Starlink has over 11,000. So Starlink is over an order of magnitude in front.
If you define a market narrowly enough then pretty much any company has a "firm grip" on some market. That doesn't mean much in terms of overall market dynamics or broader power. My local neighborhood taqueria has a firm grip on the burrito market for a radius of at least 3 miles.
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Ok. Show your work.
Which social network has larger reach than X? Which social network has stronger influence on humans who make policy decisions than X?
Which internet provider can deliver reliable access to remote regions than Starlink? Which internet provider has manipulated access in contested regions than Starlink?
Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. I don't know. What I do know is that your baseless assertions are meaningless to me. Show the facts and figures that support your claims. That's the only way to avoid being a garden-variety internet troll.
How do you define "reach" and "influence"?
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube all have more users, more daily active users, more aggregate data transferred.
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Those are silly questions entirely irrelevant to the point above.
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Why does Starlink matter in a Conversation about X?
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> Which internet provider can deliver reliable access to remote regions than Starlink?
Why do remote regions matter? No one relevant lives there.
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Remember AT&T only lost its monopoly because the government forced it to.
Yes, yes! I might be old enough to remember when that happened.
Elon Musk learned from the other two and many others. Unfortunately, Silicon Valey techno-feudalism is built to last.
I agree that SV's regressive culture is a problem. I've seen it up close. I don't have a solution, but I am concerned about where this trend might lead us.