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On October 14, 2026, SpaceX imposed an unannounced speed limit on military-grade Starshield terminals used by Ukrainian forces, automatically cutting internet connectivity for terminals moving faster than 100 mph (160 km/h) and disrupting several high-speed military drone operations.

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[-] tigermountain@lemmy.world 123 points 2 days ago

No one like Elon Musk should ever have the power to do this.

[-] Ohmmy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 2 days ago

He has bricked people's Tesla's because they were mean to him. Idk why people keep giving this rapist a pass.

[-] innermachine@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

I believe this is a result of private infastructure. If they had their own internet satelites, they wouldn't be at the mercy of some dickhead who has something to gain by manipulating their access on a whim.

The issue is resources. Ukraine has been trying to develop it's own satellite comms network but lacks the resources particularly in the middle of a war.

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[-] mobyduck648@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Take it from someone from the one country that developed then abandoned indigenous space launch capability; space infrastructure is insanely expensive.

Black Arrow was actually good though, and Britain was mad to cancel it. Also cheap for its day, the government was spaffing money on far worse at the time.

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[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 149 points 2 days ago

Hah, Elon got a bit butthurt when his bots were taken down....

[-] lithiumground@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago

Bots were not taken down 😀 Anyway, We should create awareness and advocate to not use of twitter

[-] auzy1@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago

Why would anyone want to use Twitter still?

[-] victorz@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I wrote my "independent" government news outlet to say that they should probably distance themselves from fascists.

They wrote back, saying "right now, our mission is to reach as many as possible, and right now X has many of our followers."

Cowards.

[-] mp3@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago

It wouldn't cost them a lot to diversify and be present on more platforms to transition away, cowards indeed.

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[-] im_fine_sandy@nord.pub 17 points 2 days ago

I thought it was well established that bot traffic declined since the yanked data centre stuff.

Is that not the case?

[-] Aqarius@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

The bots that were taken down on the "bot traffic" graph are web crawler bots used to index webpages for the yandex search engine. Propaganda "bots" aren't actually labeled as "bot traffic", for obvious reasons.

[-] Microtonal_Banana@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 days ago
[-] Eximius@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yandex is a search engine, it has legitimate crawler bots. So this statistic is not really beneficial to the conversation.

Also, most likely propaganda bots would be under the radar and not self-declaring as bots.

[-] kurmudgeon@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Or they're self-declaring as crawler bots for a search engine company.

[-] Eximius@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago

Unlikely. The "bot" traffic that cloudflare here identifies, is traffic according to the useragent, that is not an actual user + heuristics cloudflare uses to identify bot devices.

Since ruski propaganda bots would want to act as legitimate users, spreading LLM and/or organically generated word soup, and/or pumping views. They not only have to not be identified as bots, but also to act well enough as a user no captcha and/or cloudflare bot identification catches them.

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[-] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 90 points 2 days ago

So this is what Putin wanted in exchange for diesel....

[-] five_bucks@lemmy.ca 34 points 2 days ago

Yes, and DT, too.

Restricting Starlink access limits Ukraine’s ability to strike at Russian diesel supplies, protecting the recent agreement between the US and Russia.

[-] Dultas@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Does it though? To my knowledge Starlink doesn't work inside Russia, maybe some near the boarder. This would more impact operations in Crimea / occupied territory, naval drones, and frontline communications.

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[-] Eximius@lemmy.world 67 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I got annoyed by all the still existent butwhataboutistanists and haveyetnotseenanyrealtruthbutbelieveinbbcofallsources bros on lemmy, so I analyzed twitter posts of the big talking head himself:

Note the log scale. Now let's ponder the ramifications of the coincidence of big talking head losing fame in the exact same day as missiles strike random data center.

Edit: more info: https://lemmy.world/post/53119699

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago

Bro

Thats fucking wild

[-] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago

good to see some actual data instead of hearsay and anecdotes

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[-] JamesTBagg@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago

Elon is probably upset; when Ukraine destroyed that bot center they killed all his friends.

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[-] betanumerus@lemmy.ca 31 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

SpaceX employees seduced by Mars missions are now supporting authoritarianism, speech suppression, electoral rigging, violent invasions, and petrocracy.

[-] jj4211@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Funnily enough, some years back a recruiter came knocking for me to interview for SpaceX. I was not especially interested (not due to any particular insight to the true Musk or anything, just didn't feel like it), and the recruitor seemed sincerely baffled why I didn't immediately fall to the floor in awe at the possibility.

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[-] lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

All this to be Elon's serfs and concubines. What losers.

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[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 21 points 2 days ago

Billionaires have too much power. They need to be cut down to size.

[-] Colonel_Panic_@eviltoast.org 4 points 2 days ago

I hear France invented a neat tool to do that efficiently.

[-] tirateimas@lemmy.pt 47 points 2 days ago

We all know for which side of this war they are playing

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[-] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 39 points 2 days ago

How much are the Russians paying Musk? Like seriously this is just insane.

[-] SoloCritical@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago

They hit musks bot farm ofc he mad af

[-] BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

He did this before, in 2022. The state department and intelligence community freaked out. I guess that was just advertising and the opposition has all been turned over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war

[-] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

No, that's called the consequences of your actions. We allowed Trump to get elected and Trump is friends with Elon and Putin. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone.

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[-] random_character_a@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago

If Ukraine had any sense they would try to be as little as possible dependent on the Trumps ilk and I think they have. Message was clear from the start.

[-] einkorn@feddit.org 20 points 2 days ago

What gives you the impression that they don't try? That they don't launch hundreds of satellites themselves?

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[-] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 9 points 2 days ago

What alternative to Starlink could they use?

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[-] Brown5500@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago
[-] Tattorack@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Sounds a lot like something I saw coming from Proxima Centauri.

The moment the news broke a few years back that Ukraine relies on an Elon Musk product for their operations this was the exact future scenario I imagined.

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[-] Greyghoster@aussie.zone 21 points 2 days ago

While Musk is behaving badly again this site is almost impossible to read due to ads, pious and the like.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 2 days ago

ublock origin is right there

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[-] lithiumground@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

it is a good reason to advocate mastodon over twitter. We should advocate usage of decentralized system

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[-] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

If its Starshield it was probably ordered by Trump. The DoD controls that, and its unlikely SpaceX would alter it without their request.

Imagine how the DoD would feel if SpaceX unilaterally altered DoD service. The DoD needs to believe, even if its not true, that they have operational control.

Edit: Musk has now chimed in saying the government is in control of starshield not SpaceX as expected.

Edit: lol and Trump of course now denying doing anything. Can't wait to hear from someone else what happened. Germany is demanding answers now too.

[-] cloudshouter@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago

Putin pulled out new compromat and/or offered little kids to Trump and Musk again.

[-] how_we_burned@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

If I was Ukraine I would be doing a deal with Australia to to use the spaceport being set up under the second pillar of AUKUS, sharing with the Australians how to make launch vehicles (which are essentially what short range ballistic missiles are ie Tochka. Satalites coupled with the Australian nuemann drive would be a huge benefit for both countries, especially Ukraine who could deploy their own spaced based communication network.

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[-] Gpennyhigh@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

That's sad they still trusted elmo and should have known that he would try to benefit putin. It's wrong how it is, but he is known untrustworthy.

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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2026
503 points (98.8% liked)

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