Musk’s ‘Free’ Starlink For Helene Victims Wasn’t Free
from the decorative-pseudo-altruism dept
Last week I noted how Elon Musk saw fit to inject himself in the middle of the Helene hurricane disaster by falsely claiming that hurricane victims died because the FCC refused to give Starlink a billion dollars in subsidies. I explained at length why that claim was grotesque and incorrect, in part because the subsidies in question weren’t even slated to arrive until next year.
Most of the press didn’t bother to dissect Musk’s gross and false claim about subsidies, instead portraying him in coverage as single-handedly saving Helene victims. One, by shipping some satellite dishes to the region, and two by offering free Starlink service:
To be clear Starlink did wind up helping people by delivering some dishes to the region and by working with the FCC to enable some satellite to cell phone connectivity options (for the limited devices that support the feature). But Musk apparently couldn’t do that without throwing a tantrum and undermining the work of FEMA, which was trying to control air traffic in the region after several near-fatalities.
Another cornerstone of Starlink’s efforts to help locals involved promising “free” Starlink service:
But when locals and some news outlets ran down the claims, they discovered that the free service wasn’t free at all. In reality, users who signed up for service were still required to pay for hardware, resulting in a $400 charge:
“Try to sign up for the ostensibly “free” service in an area Starlink has designated as a Helene disaster zone, and surprise: You still have to pay for the terminal (normally $350, but reportedly discounted to $299 for disaster relief, though that’s not reflected in Starlink’s signup page), plus shipping and tax, bringing the grand total to just shy of $400.”
After 30 days, users are automatically shifted over to the $120 a month option; a steep price tag for folks who may have just lost everything they own. The kicker is this 30-day (not really free) trial was something Starlink already offered, just dressed up as unique disaster altruism.
Numerous other broadband and wireless companies are offering similarly scattered and very temporary discounts to disaster victims, and none of them got the same gushing press treatment Musk’s company seemed to enjoy in the wake of the storm.
Locals impacted by the disaster were… not impressed:
“This smells like a crafty, bait and switch, wolf in sheep’s clothing scam meant to take advantage of people instead of helping them.”
That’s not to say that Starlink can’t be of service to area residents (assuming they have power and can afford it), just not in the scale and scope presented to locals by Starlink, Musk, and adoring press coverage:
“There may be isolated scenarios when what [Musk] is offering will be a service,” [local Kinney] Baughman said. “But we’re talking about cases where someone’s way up a holler, doesn’t have access to cell service, and where the flooding has broken their fiber. You’re looking at months before you get service. In that case you might want to think about [Starlink].”
But that’s an isolated case, Baughman noted. By the time Starlink arrives for others, general internet service may already be working, and thus someone is roped into paying for a satellite service they don’t actually need.
Again, Musk’s very first instinct wasn’t really to help, it was to exploit the disaster to beg for government subsidies that had been rejected for very good reasons. Then to leverage the disaster for political advantage to Trump, by publicly undermining FEMA rescue efforts. Then to take advantage of the disaster to make him seem like he was being more helpfully altruistic than he actually was.
It’s like the YouTubers who film themselves nobly giving homeless people free tacos, but worse, not free, and at scale… during a major crisis. It’s all once again very demonstrative of who Musk truly is. Or, as the case may be, very clearly isn’t.
Filed Under: bait and switch, broadband, elon musk, hurricane helene, low earth orbit, satellite, starlink, telecom
Companies: spacex, starlink
Comments on “Musk’s ‘Free’ Starlink For Helene Victims Wasn’t Free”
Serving a good cause is often the best excuse to defense you own interests.
Altogether now:
“hurricane victims died because the FCC refused to give Starlink a billion dollars in subsidies.”
A lot of lip service, quite a few lies and very little action. These are basically the modus operandi of these people. When a far-right loon brags about whatever “good action” he/she did, just investigate further and you’ll find an hypocrite.
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It was free
The service was free, the terminals weren’t.
And FEMA famously interfered with many rescue and supply flights. Totally got in the way, and this is well documented.
What a shit liar you are.
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🥱
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Oh?
Please do show us the documents and evidence
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What a shit apologist you are.
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You mean interfered like “I’m sorry Sir, this is a disaster-area and we can only allow official or pre-cleared transports through. Because you showed up unannounced you are in the way and disturbed our logistics operation.”
And we aren’t even talking about the nutcases harassing FEMA workers looking for the “stolen money”.
You are using the word famously as if it has any factual importance, that’s just you repeating what some asshole-nobody said after he got his panties in a twist after FEMA told him to git gone and stop taking up their time.
Oh, if it’s well documented why aren’t you providing citations? But we all know why, it’s just what you usually do – make grandiose claims without substance.
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Aren’t you late for your usual morning appointment to lick Donald Trump’s asshole clean after his morning shit?
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Who said Trump only shits in the morning? As far as I’m concerned, every time he opens his mouth, more shit comes out of it. Thus giving ass-lickers have not one but two holes to lick!
Re: "Free" Cybertruck
Hey, Mr. Bennett. I’ll give you a free Cybertruck. You’ll have to pay $200,000 for the key, though.
Re: Hope that helps
You know bro. If I had said the first part of what you said. I’d win funniest of the week for making a great joke.
Instead everyone took the piss out of you, because you are a joke.
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That which is presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
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It’s not that we don’t understand you’re playing stupid word games. It’s that we’re having a meta discussion about the stupid word games you play. You can’t comprehend the meta from inside the stupid word games.
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Hey bro remember the last time you said something so stupid we all banded together to take turns making fun of you until you ran away crying and pissing youurself?
Honestly I ask. What kind of person does that once. And then says… “Well actually I quite like the taste of stale urine?”
“This smells like a crafty, bait and switch, wolf in sheep’s clothing scam meant to take advantage of people instead of helping them.”
This smells so bad you can smell it anywhere in the world. Obvious, greedy rich asshole is obvious.
Musk insults North Carolina with his actions
Apparently he thinks all of NC is backwoods Deliverance country with no internet or electricity.
Ten years ago, in rural Lizard Lick, North Carolina, you could order gigabit Ethernet from Greenlight, drive into town with your all-electric Nissan LEAF, plug your car into a fast charging CHAdeMO stand, and have an electrician wire up your house to pull energy from the same car in case there was a power outage.
Are North Carolinians supposed to be impressed by this man?
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He thinks everyone should be impressed by him. Narcissism, inherited wealth, and a massive amount of Divorced Man energy will do that.
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Complain complain complain. That’s all you do w/r/t Musk.
Your obsessive hatred clouds your judgement and corrupts your reporting on all-things Musk.
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When all Leon does is reprehensible, what do you expect people to do?
Your emperor has no clothes.
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When Elon Musk does good things, Techdirt talks about it. Techdirt can’t do anything about how “Musk doing good things” is a rarity in the here-and-now. If you think he should be lauded for running such an obvious scam, you go right ahead and do that. The rest of us still have a right to call him and his scam for what they are. We will exercise it without restraint.
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Why don’t people say nice things about evil peoples!
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Elmo’s never gonna let you on his dick.
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We know you do, but thanks for the clear confession.
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“Your obsessive hatred clouds your judgement”
Dipshit heal thyself
The lies were 'newsworthy', how about the truth for once?
No worries, I’m sure the same news outlets that were gushing about how terrible it was that Elon was refused government subsidies that Would Have Saved Lives(despite being slated for rollout next year), and is heroically Giving Away Valuable Starlink Service(with just a teeny-tiny catch) will get right on calling him out for exploiting a disaster in order to con people with absolutely-not-free Starlink service.
Any day now…
Just because it costs hundreds of dollars doesn’t mean it’s not free.
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That’s what you get on Techdirt. Elon bad no matter what.
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I’m curious .. are you able to name one thing Elon Musk has done for people other than himself?
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Literally free hurricane internet.
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Except it’s not.
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Free*
With a $400 purchase.
Right wingers are those people who think all the free with purchase items are actually free and totally not baked into the cost.
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Minus the ‘free’ part, sure, but I understand, it’s not like Elon has oodles of money available that he could have used to cover the costs he’s trying to saddle hurricane victims with, he has to charge them hundreds of dollars and then a hundred plus more on a monthly basis while they’re trying to get their lives back and potentially need every dollar they have to do stuff like fix their houses and pay for food and rent.
Re: Re: Re:2 Way to go slugger
You saw how we clowned on bratty matty and said… “Well my dad never really loved me so I’ll talk any attention I can get.”
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Publicly denounce and condemn radical gender ideology and the for-profit physical mutilation and chemical sterilization of vulnerable children and young people?
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Boosting recycled Nazi rhetoric doesn’t fit the bill.
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So he’s pushed that men raping, beating, and killing women due to toxic masculinity is wrong?
He’s come out against what we do to migrant women?
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I mean, he has effectively disowned the transgender child he helped bring into the world only because they were transgender, so from a certain point of view, you’re not entirely wrong.
But he also disowned his trans child because they were trans. If you believe abandoning his child because that child wasn’t a carbon copy of himself is a good thing, either you’re already a shitty parent or you’d be one if you ever become a parent.
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Telling that you use the cisgender Elmo’s preferred pronouns, but not those of his transgender daughter.
Re: Re: Re:4
I didn’t think to use she/her pronouns partially because I wasn’t sure what her preferred pronouns were and didn’t think to look it up. But if the use of she/her pronouns could make my point any better than my actual post did, and could do so beyond mere accuracy in pronouns, you go right ahead and explain how.
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They/them are gender neutral pronouns that don’t violate a person’s preferred pronouns.
But cute attempt at trying to use the language of inclusion to attack people.
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They do when it’s a trans person under discussion and they’ve made their pronoun choice clear, but cute attempt at trying to use the language of inclusion as part of your anti-‘woke’ campaign.
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Why don’t you go and gargle something, your infantile trolling doesn’t fool anyone.
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Nope. Everyone is they/them. They are universal gender neutral pronouns. We had this discussion at the Queer Resource Center at my university.
Trolls usually accuse me of being woke because I see LGTBQ+ folk as human beings with rights and freedoms. Can’t say I’ve ever been called anti-woke by a troll before. Interesting.
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Nope, singular they is only appropriate when used about non-binary people who prefer it or an individual whose identity is unknown, and Vivian Wilson’s identity is far from unknown, so AC is absolutely correct on this point.
And yet you’ve just shown evidence of the opposite position. Interesting.
Can’t say any AC has ever been called a troll by someone defending their anti-woke position before. Oh, wait… I actually can because you’re not the first and, sadly, I’m sure you won’t be the last.
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Nope. They is always appropriate for anyone who the speaker doesn’t choose to identify by a gender. Gendered language is not required. Every individual is a they. It is a neutral term, just like individual or person.
Except I haven’t. You claiming I have because you disagree with me isn’t the same thing.
Sure, buddy. Whatever you say. You’re definitely right because you believe you are. Solipsism is very healthy.
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Telling that you know how use the cisgender pronouns better than most people…
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TIL: Stephen T. Stone doesn’t have the ability to run a quick online search to find out a trans person’s preferred pronouns.
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“Publicly denounce and condemn .. ”
How is/are his said condemnation(s) not about himself?
key phrase: not about himself
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Except you never say anything about the unnecessary and risky circumcision of American boys, and nor do you say anything about the prevention of puberty in disabled children by their parents.
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Cool lets see your super cool article about it bro!
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Hey herman, Elmos never gonna let yousuck it
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Elon promised “free Starlink”, then made people pay a lot of money to get the equipment needed for “free Starlink” instead of lending people the equipment free of charge until the situation on the ground improves. If your morality sees that as “good”, your morality is heavily skewed by the idea of “rich people are inherently superior and superhuman” That mindset itself is morally foul because no one can become a billionaire, or stay that wealthy, without exploiting and hurting a lot of poor people along the way.
I'd compare this to a "free* to play" scheme, but...
From what I’ve seen of FtP, you can at least play the game even if a lot of content is locked behind paywalls. This is more akin to advertising a game as free and technically giving it out for free only for the game to require the player to buy (i.e. pay money for) an online account before the player can play said game.
Amateur Radio solved this problem about 90 years ago.
These days, you don’t even need a Morse Code test.
is the $400 refundable?
I read in another source that in their standard agreement if you cancel in one month you get that $400 back. If thats the truth then I gotta side with Musk on this one.
What do you expect from the guy who has been running the biggest vaporware ponzi scheme ever?
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Ha ha ha I derailed another thread.
You all make such great puppets.
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Re: Good job i guess
And all it cost was what little dignity and self respect you had left…
Traditional ISP over Starlink
I’d rather take a traditional ISP (Comcast/Xfinity, Spectrum, Century Link, et al.) over Starlink. Starlink is at the whims of a manchild that cut service at the drop of a hat if he’s displeased with his customers.
Havnt people learned that EVERYTHING Elon touches turns to shit? He didnt actually ever “invent” anything. He just bought companies that were already doing things. (Cybertruck might be an invention, but only if his mom sent him the box of “art” things from the fridge)
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Hey, he totally saved those kids in that cave!
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Yup, it was totally pedoguy who saved the kids in that cave. Oh, wait. I’m getting Elmo mixed up with Vernon Unsworth.
Musk’s ‘Free’ Starlink For Helene Victims Wasn’t Free
Hmm. Ive been following the Starlink posts on X and note that nowhere does Musk claim the devices are free. Rather, starlink has made getting devices into the area a priority. The service was originally free for 30 days. Now no service charge until next year in the Helene area. As noted previously, service is no-contract and can be terminated at any time. I get that giving away these terminals would have been a grand gesture. What does giving away the service qualifies him as? (Hint: according to his detractors: a villain) As an aside, he’s made his own arrangements to fly the kits in. FedEx isn’t delivering there just yet.
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That’s the point, though: What good is “free service” from Starlink if people can’t use the service without first paying for the expensive hardware?