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Iran's internet shutdown is chillingly precise and may last some time
- tim333 9mo agoOne of the best sources on Iran seems to be the Iranian/British comedian Omid Djalili on X funnily enough. The BBC have been a bit rubbish.
- perihelions 9mo agoA Time source is alleging hundreds of protestor deaths in Tehran[0]. It's a repeat of 2019 [1]; the network blocks aren't incidental, it's their purpose to create cover for coordinating massacres. [0] https://time.com/7345092/iran-protests-death-toll-regime-crackdown/ https://time.com/7345092/iran-protests-death-toll-regime-cra... > "A Tehran doctor told TIME on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital had recorded at least 217 protester deaths, “most by live ammunition.”" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–2020_Iranian_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–2020_Iranian_protests
- lostlogin 9mo agoA dark lesson from the world. Turn off internet before shooting protesters dead.
- stogot 9mo agoOr if it happens before the Internet, create a Great Firewall to block and censor any mention of it. [Tianemen Square]
- perihelions 9mo agoHow they exfiltrated footage of the 1989 massacre is an interesting story in its own right. The AP photojournalist who captured (among others) Tank Man couldn't safely walk the streets, so he recruited a random tourist to smuggle his film rolls, in his underwear, from the hotel to the AP's press office. > [Jeff Widener] "I had earlier accomplished my mission of photographing the occupied Tiananmen Square so I gave all my rolls of film to Kurt/Kirk who smuggled it back to the A.P. office in his underwear. The long-haired college kid was wearing a dirty Rambo T-shirt, shorts and sandals. Security would never suspect him of being a journalist." https://archive.nytimes.com/lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/behind-the-scenes-tank-man-of-tiananmen/ https://archive.nytimes.com/lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/0... From the AP office, it was scanned (?) and exfiltrated with a dial-up modem, over copper telephone landlines (unsure of the technology. 1980's gadgets).
- tsol 9mo agoIn the USA we manage to do that without turning the internet off by just saying they were resisting the police.
- 9dev 9mo agoSo, Trump is going to go after Iran now, right? As he said he would?
- lostlogin 9mo agoThey are going to need a large military. By my count, Greenland, Mexico, Venezuela and Iran have all been threatened this year.
- ndsipa_pomu 9mo agoWell, they can probably skip conscription/draft by ensuring that the poorest people cannot afford food and housing unless they sign up for active service. (c.f. ICE recruitment)
- 9dev 9mo agoDon't forget Colombia…
- sph 9mo agoI've always thought the world needs a project to provide guerrilla internet connectivity to a large area using cheap, common hardware like a Raspberry Pi for situations like these which are increasingly common. Basically a 12V battery-powered Wifi+3G(+Wimax maybe) antenna for clients and an outbound Ethernet port to plug to some illegal internet socket. Make it open-source, able to be built with a little ingenuity and low cost.
- Telemakhos 9mo agoStarlink now offers direct-to-cellphone 4G coverage, no extra equipment needed.
- pelagicAustral 9mo agoYou do still need an ISP playing ball with Starlink for that to work.
- hdgvhicv 9mo agoYou need Musk to play ball. Starlink worked fine when Afghanistan turned off the internet. There’s a lot of rhetoric about the evil musk internet there - the government don’t care about things like vsat, it’s very specifically framed as anti America and anti Musk Remember the people enforcing it (going to businesses and checking their connections) are thick as two short planks. Iran I expect has a more effective enforcement than the taliban, but the principal is the same - starlink works fine in these countries and downlinks elsewhere (Europe in the case of Afghanistan). GEO providers like Inmarsat downlink in places like the Netherlands. It’s all rather meaningless as only a tiny number of people have access to these systems, compared to access to the Internet via phones.
- lostlogin 9mo agoMusk has to agree though - and he was shutting this down at various points in Ukraine over his support for Russian. Ideally Starlink wouldn’t be involved.
- nomilk 9mo agoWord on the street is Starlink is operational in Iran [0]. Although the article claims it's being jammed in some neighbourhoods: > Starlink was being jammed, Rashidi said, although the extent varied from one neighbourhood to another. [0] https://x.com/WarMonitor3/status/2009729660792258805 https://x.com/WarMonitor3/status/2009729660792258805
- luke5441 9mo agoI'd guess you can also easily track down star link terminals via drones (fly high up until you find a signal, then go lower while keeping the signal active)
- WhereIsTheTruth 9mo ago[flagged]
- jimnotgym 9mo agoI remember hearing a report that Iran was making real progress towards safety and freedom before the war on terror led them to appoint strong men to keep them safe. Does anyone know enough to comment?
- heraldgeezer 9mo agoYou may be referring to Khatami’s Reforms, nevertheless. Conservative factions in Iran, including the Revolutionary Guard and unelected institutions like the Guardian Council, resisted Khatami’s reforms. They shut down reformist newspapers, jailed activists, and blocked progressive legislation. The reformist movement was gradually smothered, and by 2005, the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president, reversing many of Khatami’s policies. The loopback to "its all the wests fault anyhow" is so tiresome from people like you. "appoint" lmao You think since the revolution in 1979 any election has been real? Yes in b4 the Shaha was bad too. etc. waah waah. At some point, you grow up and pick a side. Ruissia, Iran, China and rouge states, vs The West, EU and USA. Iran is the world’s top state sponsor of terror, per the US State Department. The IRGC and Quds Force fund, arm, and direct groups like Hezbollah ($700M/year), Hamas, Houthis, and Iraqi militias. They’ve been linked to assassinations (e.g., 2011 Saudi ambassador plot), bombings (Bulgaria 2012), and cyberattacks on US/EU infrastructure. Even during economic crises, Tehran spends ~$1B annually on proxies. Recent examples: UK arrested Iranians in 2025 for plotting attacks on Israeli sites (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2wqy5ejdjo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2wqy5ejdjo); Houthis’ Red Sea strikes use Iranian drones/missiles. Sanctions and court rulings (Khobar Towers, 9/11 facilitation) confirm their role.
- lostlogin 9mo ago> vs The West, EU and USA. That’s not a side anymore.
- jimnotgym 9mo ago>The loopback to "its all the wests fault anyhow" is so tiresome from people like you I most certainly said nothing of the sort. I watched a documentary that claimed that many years ago and I asked if it was true. Go and post your vile rubbish on Twitter
- kleptomaniacs 9mo ago[flagged]
- AnimalMuppet 9mo agoRiiiiiiiiight. It's fine for the US to be opposed to what ICE is doing, but Iranians cannot oppose their government for doing similar and worse things to them? They can't decide they've had enough on their own, without the CIA telling them they should be mad? And why not? Do you think they're too dumb to figure out that they should be mad? Or that they deserve to live in such conditions? Do you realize how patronizing you're being? How much you're denying them agency?
- lucasRW 9mo agoWhat's chilling is realizing how little the coverage of those riots is in the West. At best, the BBC is copy-pasting the statements from Khamenei. Thanks Elon.
- heraldgeezer 9mo agoHi LucasRW! Just wanted to comment on this. Elon? How is this Elons fault? Starlink is the only way to get internet in Iran. X have clips and videos posted as the few social networks that have it. This content is not suitable for instagram or facebook. SVT (my swedish news) have had segments on this with reporters, not in the country, but she is in Lebanon. She is arab biased, but they are reporting on it. Asmongold (worlds largest youtuber right now and an Elon fan) is one of the few having long 45min-2h segments about the Iran protests on his stream right now? But you are so blind your kneejerk reaction is to blame Elon Musk lmao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v61Md-uIYQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v61Md-uIYQg
- lucasRW 9mo agoYou misunderstood my message. I am genuinely thanking Elon, because without X and now Starlink, we indeed would have 0 knowledge of what's going no. At best, we would have the BBC and Skynews echoing Khamenei's statements.
- heraldgeezer 9mo agoSorry, I assumed you were sarcastic. That type of Reddit-tier “kindness” is so common and annoying across the internet that I just assume people are sarcastic now. Sorry =￣ω￣=
- rddit 9mo agoThis is a particularly gruesome Face of Reddit.
- ninjagoo 9mo agoThat old maxim - the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it - no longer true unfortunately. Larger and larger swathes of the world population are coming under the purview of governments and corporations that are technologically strangling the free flow of information over the intertubes. China, Russia, India, Iran, UK, US (corporations a.t.m.) are the prominent examples. Just having a resilient software stack is no longer sufficient. An open source hardware stack AND infrastructure is critical. Eventually there will be need for an open source manufacturing base as well. Even if it is only at the level of 1980s computing, that is better than nothing. The world needs some big thinkers to start working on this yesterday. A civ resilient project to avoid the dystopian futures or something like the dark ages coming back.
- ninjagoo 9mo agoThere is a case to be made that overcoming oppression is extremely hard to achieve in populations over 50 million. Are there any successful examples where this has happened?
- perihelions 9mo agoThe Soviet Union had a population larger than the United States' at the time of its collapse. North of 100 million people were liberated virtually overnight from direct Russian rule, from USSR states (over 50 million in Ukraine alone); and another 100+ million from Russian-backed communist governments in Warsaw Pact states (40 million in Poland alone). British India (three modern states) had a population of 400 million at the time of its independence from Britain. That was famously a coordinated, nation-wide movement. Indonesia was around 200 million people at the end of the Suharto dictatorship and its transition towards democracy.
- ninjagoo 9mo agoSoviet Union - was that really opposition to oppression that succeeded or the state collapsed internally - disintegrated? British India could be good example - but there's a case to be made that it was overthrow of an external colonial rule that never integrated with the local population, so not sure there is a good parallel with the Iran situation. Indonesia - this appears to be a really good example, along with Phillipines (1986). So what's different about Iran - why the repeated failures there?
- ViktorRay 9mo agoThe Revolutions of 1989 that led to the fall of the iron curtain were bottom up in a region with a large population. In August of 1989, 2 million people held hands to create a chain. This was one of the large protests in human history. It led to the death of communism in Europe. More information in “The Baltic Way” article below. Revolutions of 1989: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 The Baltic Way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way The Solidarity movement in Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union...
- ninjagoo 9mo agointeresting that this item has disappeared off the front pages completely, while items with much fewer comments persist...
- heraldgeezer 9mo agoRun Tor Snowflake browser extension to help internet access (I like to think it helps!) https://snowflake.torproject.org/ https://snowflake.torproject.org/
- Yaser_Amiri 9mo agoIt's a blackout! meaning "IP" doesn't work any more. IP aside, even cell network and landline barely work and people can not call each other or send a SMS!
- heraldgeezer 9mo agoI know IP and cell is down. Starlink works. Just suggesting.
- WhereIsTheTruth 9mo agoSo we are censoring comments we don't like? Iran? No, right here in the West Comment in question: It's ironic to watch the contradictions unfold On one hand, nobody actually knows what's happening in Iran, yet everyone has a rock solid opinion, complete with intricate details, as if they'd just left a classified briefing On the other hand, those same confident voices all want the same thing: a leader who'll privatize Iran's oil for Western companies, align with US policy, open markets to Western finance, and prioritize defense contracts over local development Funny how that works Some random farmer from Ohio is obsessed with Iran for some reason
- appreciatorBus 9mo agoThe vast majority of people cheering on Iranian protesters don’t know anything about Ian’s oil. The see people in the street protesting their theocratic regime and they cheer them on. To imagine that these voices are all just oil puppets is the stuff of leftist group think. Your comment wasn’t censored, your fellow readers flagged it because they thought it was bullshit.
- _DeadFred_ 9mo agoIran was executing women for not wearing hats. That is what the flyover people around me know about Iran and is enough for them to think they'd be OK with the theocratic regime gone.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dismalaf 9mo agoIt's as simple as: Iranians don't want a theocratic dictatorship that oppresses women and funds terrorism worldwide. Almost anything is better than Iran's current government so anyone who loves freedom even a tiny bit should cheer them on.
- ChrisArchitect 9mo agoRelated: Iran Goes Into IPv6 Blackout https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46542683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46542683