Elon Musk has brought the power of the internet to the most remote place on the planet: the Marubo tribe in the Amazon rainforest.
The village of about 2,000 people has seen the billionaire owner of social media platform X bring about a transformation in their village after the arrival of satellite internet provided by Starlink.
Musk‘s installation of 20 antennas in the village on the Itui River initially brought joy and hope.
“When he arrived, everyone was happy,” Tsainama Marubo, 73, told The New York Times. Over time, however, the technology has led to unexpected problems.
Tribal elders said that while the internet service was initially a great celebration for them, it has turned into a disaster… because some of the once chaste tribesmen are now displaying ‘aggressive sexual behaviour’.
It’s not just pornography that causes concern: other problems range from boys playing violent shooting games to chatting with strangers online and becoming addicted to their phones for hours at a time.
Another tribal member said they are also becoming lazy and adopting what he calls ‘white people’s ways’.
Marubo youth, who used to spend time making dyes and jewellery, now prefer to be online, losing interest in the activities that once brought the community together.
Despite these concerns, Tsainama acknowledges the importance of the new technology, noting that the benefits are obvious, especially in emergency situations and for keeping in touch with loved ones.
What is the Starlink system?
Starlink is the first satellite-based internet system that uses low Earth orbit to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet anywhere in the world.
Its bandwidth will allow people to stream, play multiplayer games, make video calls and much more simultaneously.
The website explains that most satellite internet services work with stations orbiting more than 35,000 km away. This distance causes the famous latency, the delay caused by data travelling from the satellite to the user.
So, Starlink is a set of satellites orbiting at about 550 km, offering a latency of about 25 ms.
Indeed, there are really good fibre optics whose ping in a multiplayer game is less than 10ms, but we are talking about satellites. So we need an antenna in the house that connects to the entire Starlink system.