Musk’s Pledge To Bring Starlink To Iran Didn’t Actually Do Anything. That Didn’t Stop The Hype Machine.

Despite Elon Musk's disdain for the press, his legend wouldn't exist without the media's need to hyperventilate over every last thing that comes out of the billionaire's mouth. We're at the point where the dumbest offhand comment by Musk becomes its own three week news cycle (see the entire news cycle based on Musk's comments on a baseless story about somebody cheating at chess with anal beads).

Of course it's even worse if Musk says something that actually sounds important. Like when Musk recently proclaimed he'd be offering Starlink satellite broadband service in Iran in a heroic bid to help protesting Iranians avoid government surveillance and censorship. It was literally a two word tweet, but the claim, as usual, resulted in lots of ass kissing and a week long news cycle about how Musk was heroically helping Iranians.

I believe that @elonmusk and @spacex Starlink should win the Nobel Prize for Peace.

- Shervinator (@shervin) September 25, 2022

But the announcement was hollow. Not that you'd know this by perusing press stories. Only a few outlets, like Al Jazeera and The Intercept, could be bothered to dig behind the claims to discover the announcement didn't actually accomplish much of anything real.

Iran quickly banned the Starlink website, and the only way actual Iranians would be able to use the service is if somebody smuggled Starlink dishes (aka terminals") into the country in the middle of a massive wave of violent unrest, something that's likely impossible at any real scale. There's also the issue of no ground stations tying connectivity together in Iran:

Musk's plan is further complicated by Starlink's reliance on ground stations: communications facilities that allow the SpaceX satellites to plug into earthbound internet infrastructure from orbit. While upgraded Starlink satellites may no longer need these ground stations in the near future, the network of today still largely requires them to service a country as vast as Iran, said Humphreys, the University of Texas professor. Again, Iran is unlikely to approve the construction within its borders of satellite installations owned by an American defense contractor.

So even if Musk wanted to offer struggling Iranians broadband access they're extremely unlikely to be able to get dishes. And even if they could get dishes, they probably couldn't use them because the necessary infrastructure wasn't in place. Of course Musk knew this. But Musk also knows that any random bullshit that comes out of his mouth creates several weeks of free press because the ad-based U.S. press has steadily devolved into a billionaire-coddling bullshit clickbait and controversy machine.

The Intercept found it didn't take much for large swaths of the Internet to believe that the billionaire had dramatically changed things in Iran with a tweet. Musk fandom is often a fan fiction based community, where truth is fairly negotiable:

Implausibility hasn't stopped Musk's fans, either. One tweet from a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council purporting to document a Starlink dish already successfully secreted into Iran turned out to be a photo from 2020, belonging to an Idaho man who happened to have a Persian rug.

That's not to say that Starlink can't help people in countries where emergency connectivity is needed, such as in Ukraine. Or rural Kentucky (assuming they can afford the $710 first month bill). But it is to say that turning your brain off every single time Elon Musk opens his mouth because you've convinced yourself he's some kind of deity is violently annoying to people still living in reality.

And while Musk loves to whine and cry about the unfairness of the press, his legend literally wouldn't exist without the endless supply of clickbait-seeking editors who are completely uninterested in the actual truth behind any and every claim the man makes, whether it's the capabilities of full self driving" or Starlink's potential.