The effects of the internet (and Starlink) on the Marubo, one of the most isolated tribes in the Amazon

Fake news, scams and pornography:the Marubo villages were not ready for the internet and the web, which arrived "thanks" to the Starlink antennas.

That of Marubo is an indigenous population of Brazil who has lived isolated for centuries, in the middle of the Amazon forest, along the Curuçá and Ituí rivers.The group is made up of around two thousand people, organized in disparate villages and days' walk away from the rest of the world.For years, the marubo have lived in contact with nature, also thanks to ayahuasca, a decoction of herbs and leaves known for its hallucinogenic properties.

This lysergic union between human and nature has suffered a trauma in recent months:last September, in fact, the area populated by the marubo was reached by the internet coverage of Starlink, a service that offers fast satellite connections.Starlink, which is owned by SpaceX, an aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, it works relatively simply:all you need is a small antenna to connect to the internet quickly and rather stably, thanks to a network of around six thousand small satellites launched over the years. The service is of particular interest to those who live in rural and mountainous areas but in its growing expansion it is also encountering these particular cases, pockets of humanity that until now had remained disconnected.And now, suddenly, they found themselves online.

The toxicity of the web

The New York Times ha travelled in the Amazon to reach one of these villages and record the changes brought by Starlink in the space of a few months.“When it arrived everyone was happy,” said Tsainama Marubo, 73, underlining the great benefits of the innovation – the possibility of remote video calling, for example.“But now things have gotten worse,” Tsainama specified, speaking of greater divisions and a slight laziness among the younger ones.

The web in the heart of the Amazon it is not so different from what we know.Unlike the marubo, however, we are a little more accustomed to his dynamics – especially those toxic.In the space of a few months, the peaceful existence of the group was overturned by phenomena that we now know well, such as misinformation, the success of group chats, online scams, pornography and social network feeds.Despite all this and despite her complaints, it is Tsainama herself who implores journalists "not to take away the internet".

The bizarre and disturbing case of the marubo is a small part of the recent success of Starlink, which began operations in 2019 but is recording strong growth (according to some forecasts around 80 percent) and could bring more than 6 billion dollars in SpaceX's coffers.

What is Starlink for?

Starlink has so far been talked about mainly in geopolitical and military terms, due to its use in Ukraine, Gaza and other war zones.The service is provided by a private company, SpaceX, which however has very close relationships with the US government, effectively depending on agreements with NASA for space launches.What was supposed to be a source of economic revenue for the company, however, turned out to be a crucial product in some of the hottest and most delicate contexts of recent years.The fact that Starlink is in fact in the hands of Musk - a divisive character with increasingly extreme opinions - has caused much discussion in recent times, so much so as to push the Pentagon to work with the company to block the'illicit use of satellites by the Russian army.