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Americans Have Grown Dramatically Anti-Data Center
- falkensmaize 4mo agoIt seems like there’s very little upside to allowing one in your state. They don’t bring in large amounts of new jobs once construction is done, they leech power and water like vampires increasing costs and depleting resources, they add noise and light pollution to nearby areas, they’re ugly. They only seem to benefit large tech companies.
- ecshafer 4mo agoThe US has been dragging its feet in increasing power capacity and modernizing the grid. Data Centers (and one day EVs) are the kind of push we need to get the complacent monopolies to do the work. The water concerns are absolutely overblown, the paper that everyone draws their numbers from had to be ammended because they had a 1000x water usage error. When a poor town has an empty lot get converted to a data center, they are getting some jobs. 20 jobs of remote hands, plumbers, and security guards is better than zero. And there is increased tax revenue (this point I disagree with, because property tax is wrong and we need a land value tax). Long term these changes are good.
- pylua 4mo agoI’m not against data centers, but they need to come with their own clean power supply, and export minimal pollution to its neighbors . If you can’t provide that it’s not worth the downsides for the community.
- db48x 4mo agoSmall power plants are less efficient and more polluting than larger ones. They are also harder to inspect and certify on a regular schedule. A single 1GW power facility in your county is much better than 10000 small power plants, one for each business.
- xg15 4mo agoTrue, centralized power generation using a grid that can carry that load would be the best solution. But in absence of that, the alternatives only seem to be between inefficient decentralized green and inefficient decentralized non-green solutions. In that case, I'd opt for the green ones. (Or of course: no datacenter at all)
- pylua 4mo agoEven for wind or solar ?
- db48x 4mo agoLOL. You’d need thousands of acres of solar panels to provide power for a single data center. Of course the exact area needed depends on what part of the world you’re in, but are you going to put up with 4 square miles of solar panels in your city? That’s a square two miles on a side, or 3.4km×3.4km. Or are you going to let them install hundreds of wind turbines in your neighborhood?
- pylua 4mo agoYes. Don’t build the data center unless you can support that. What’s so strange about it?
- xg15 4mo ago> Data Centers (and one day EVs) are the kind of push we need to get the complacent monopolies to do the work. Genuinely interested to know, has this actually happened on a larger scale? I.e. data centers triggering a systematic push to modernize the grid? My impression (from headlines) was that companies either accept rising prices for grid power or generate their own power - using noisy, polluting and CO2 emitting gas turbines. In both situations the local communities are left holding the bag. > they are getting some jobs. 20 jobs of remote hands, plumbers, and security guards is better than zero. They'll also have made sure they won't ever get any more jobs from that "investment" over the next decades, whereas someone else could have built something with actual job growth instead. I think those takes are a bit like saying the Fentanyl factory next door is great because it also needs a janitor and the exhaust contains CO2 so will make the plants grow faster.
- tencentshill 4mo agoThey don't employ local maintenence/security. They contract with a large, reliable company from the nearest big city.
- ecshafer 4mo agoAnd those companies hire more people in the area. I don't care if the guy is driving 30 minutes to work. I know plenty of people whose careers are "security" . Why would I not want them to have more work?
- nacozarina 4mo agoNo, they hire third-party staffing companies who only hire ‘independent contractors’ at low rates, with no benefits and punitive Ts&Cs.
- pylua 4mo agoI agree with this, and it really exposes how two faced and scandalous these companies are. They all love green energy, but will they use that for their data centers in your backyard? Rules for the and not for me !
- polski-g 4mo ago[flagged]
- mycall 4mo agoYet they still love ordering from Amazon.
- r_lee 4mo agoAmazon seemed to work just fine before this AI datacenter boom
- cousinbryce 4mo agoArguably Amazon is worse since they added AI
- general1465 4mo agoYou don't need a datacenter in every town to run Amazon eShop.
- pfannkuchen 4mo agoMedia: "X is horrible!" <6 months later> Media: "Americans Don't Like X"
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo agoIt's true that folks are unhappy when media does it's actual damn job and explains the things that bring harm. However, a useless media is also a thing and it exists right along side of worthwhile media. News Media: [Lockstep silence on Gov surveillance before 2013. Mostly silent on Gov/Corp surveillance after. Rarely reports on pols trading campaign cash for law/power] <2026> Surveillance Is Everywhere and is being deployed against everyone possible. Public: Increasingly exploited. Seemingly conditioned. Many are giddy after voting for a lying, grifting autocrat. Most don't give a thought to reelecting pols funded by career bribery. I prefer the news media that honors it's 1A protections by actually informing the public.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- _23sd 4mo agoI have several friends who used to lament the loss of manufacturing jobs as a ticket to the middle class, but now say they're going to protest a proposed data center, which feels a bit ironic. None really link it to AI's social impact like Gizmodo does here, the argument always starts with "I don't understand what they need a data center for" (often genuinely wanting me to explain it since I work with computers) and then goes into noise, water use, or loss of farmland. I'd probably not want to live near the noise pollution of a data center or any other kind of noisy industry either, so their views aren't incomprehensible or anything (though the farmland one makes zero sense to me), but it does seem like an instance of the revealed preference that many Americans are just deeply skeptical of anything more intensive than an Amazon warehouse going on in their area, even if they enjoy a fantasy version of the country where (usually other) people have a nice union job in a widget factory. It's good to remember when political extremists try to claim there's some easy fix that will make America an industrial powerhouse again; in reality, most of us don't want anything close to that.
- yoyohello13 4mo agoHow are data centers creating manufacturing jobs?
- vitally3643 4mo agoDatacenters don't create jobs and drain local resources. It takes a couple dozen people to fully staff a datacenter. That's literally a rounding error in employment statistics. Framing it as an argument against American manufacturing or jobs is complete nonsense.
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo ago> Datacenters don't create jobs and drain local resources. Recap DATACENTERS DON'T CREATE JOBS DATACENTERS DRAIN LOCAL RESOURCES DATACENTERS DRIVE UP PRICES Of CRITICAL COMPONENTS 5-FOLD [there are countless more lines but you get the idea] Datacenters are the greatest epic tragedy since car culture/trespassing culture mass-murdered childhood.
- 4mo ago