alt Hacker NewsFortunately, the government cannot enforce complete blackout because thousands of startlink terminals are active inside the country. They have been complaining about it [1] to no avail. Using these terminals activists and journalists continue to upload videos of demonstrations to social media which has enabled analyses that show demonstrations are very wide spread [2] and continue to grow.
[1] https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/conferences/RRB/Pages/Starlink....
Replies
Where are the ground stations Iranian traffic is using?
Starlink usually lacks the bandwidth to tunnel traffic very far. In most countries the ground station is in the same country. My bet is, a neighboring country, within reach of Iranian missiles. Oman and Turkey are listed but that data is old.
But its not about censorship in the usual sense really. Its about preventing peer to peer communication. With less than a percent of iranians having access to each other either locally or via foreign internet, they cut down their ability to organise significantly. Starlink doesnt offer a solution here. Starlink doesnt matter. Every starlink person could turn up to a protest and it would still be less impactful than previous protests.
Isn't it possible to jam the starlink receiver?
> social media which has enabled analyses
Social media is such a narrow lens that I would be cautious accepting that analysis at face value.
They are almost completely inaccessible to the average Iranian. A friend of mine who has come a long way to fight Iranian censorship told me that they essentially don't exist.
in 2019 internet shutdown happened just before crackdown on protests
Probably the goal of the blackouts is to hinder organizing on social media, discord, whatsapp, etc, not to prevent news getting out.