I remember just 10 years ago using a special app on my phone to alert me of any potential satellite flares so I could run out and catch them.

Now I can't look at the night sky for 2 minutes without seeing one.

We're just a few millimeters away from revoking that agreement though. There's not that many of them.

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Any way to help them do that?

Don't count on it. These things don't just zip along in their orbits. LEO is crowded. They have to maneuver to avoid collisions... a lot.

Over the past six months, Starlink satellites have been increasingly performing collision avoidance maneuvers. According to a report filed by SpaceX with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX broadband satellites were forced to avoid more than 25 thousand times from December 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023. And since their launch in 2019, the total number of maneuvers has reached 50 thousand.

If Starlink or any other mega-constellation company loses control of their satellites for any reason, there could be collisions. A recent study (Note: PDF) suggests that a sufficiently powerful CME could cause a runaway Kessler Syndrome in as little as 2.8 days if the loss of control lasts that long.

Polluting atmosphere doing so.

sooo then this isn't a problem if they all burn out eventually? hehe i'm just being pedantic of course

I expect that we will get in orbit refueling to extend their life once you get a good nuclear and solar panel power tug with an electric thruster that can deliver fuel, they're in a similar orbit if you just do that.

Ads on the fucking moon are going to do it for me.

It would be better to support public fiber infrastructure (through PUDs) in almost every way. I know not all remote areas can be reached with fiber, but most rural areas can be. My county has done exactly that with the rural portions - they focused on rolling it out to underserved rural areas first (even though it was more expensive to do that up front). Now, those rural areas have gigabit fiber and they didn't have to pay tens of thousands to wire it up to their homes.

Geo could do the job at a fraction of the environmental cost.

Latency would be a bit higher but that doesn't matter for download.

You know capitalism has reached peak efficiency when instead of laying some cables or even build a few more cell towers we decide to litter the atmosphere with satellites instead

You realize to reach rural / ocean areas and have continuous service, they do typically at some point fly over urban areas.

There are lots of pockets of rural all over the place and if you want to get it all, you'll end up with a global service where you have bandwidth to serve urban areas.

Edit: they also serve air traffic where ground service isnt available.