It matters because it helps the "Elon Bad" storyline, that seems to be the connecting thread between all these "reports" whether about SpaceX or Tesla by some news outlets which dont even do the due diligence of putting the stories into any kind of perspective or try to find out if the implied premise of the headline is true or should even matter to the casual reader.
I found this one weird trick. I select key words in an article and use an internet search to answer probing questions like 'why this matters'.
For example: Near the top of the article is the sentence: "Kessler syndrome is bad; atmospheric incineration may be worse, says astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell"
this has nothing to do with kessler syndrome. If anything, it's the opposite: satellites that are low in orbit deorbiting naturally. The article fails to explain why deorbiting sattelites at this frequency is bad, it just loosely suggests it with nothing to back up the claim.
The earth's atmosphere is pretty big, and sattelites are just made out of aluminum and crap. I don't think it is a big deal.
I could search this topic on google scholar for hours, but I can already tell the result is that I would probably find nothing of substance.
When have we given up on expecting journalists to do their jobs and write articles worthy of being read and containing actual information? If I wanted to read blubberish I'd go read some AI slop but if an article is written by a human I have some base expectation of it providing a modicum of value to me. Even more so if it reaches the HN frontpage.
