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They chose to add the word "guzzle". They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". But they made the editorial deci
by thegrim33 3mo ago
They chose to add the word "guzzle". They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". But they made the editorial decision to add in "guzzle". What's the word for this type of propaganda, where they add in some sort of adjective that wasn't needed, in order to prime the reader on how to think/feel, rather than just objectively reporting the facts? What are the odds that the content of the article is objective and factual, given the decisions they made with the headline?
- bgun 3mo ago[flagged]
- JuniperMesos 3mo agoThis post is propaganda for exactly the same cause that The Register article is propaganda for.
- EA-3167 3mo agoWhat's the cause?
- fc417fc802 3mo agoSomeone expressing frustration at emotionally charged headlines that clearly intend to rile people up is propaganda? Absurd.
- arcticfox 3mo agoLol the word guzzle in this context is just objectively spin. It's fine, especially because it's so transparent, but it only takes reading 4 words to know the position of the article on the situation.
- coldtea 3mo agoI find that the word guzzle is dead accurate. They consume a huge amount of the country's electricity not only for no clear benefit to society, but mostly for making it worse, with more social media posts, stupid videos, surveillance, advertising-led consumption, ai slop As compared to productive uses, like lighting, food preservation, home warming, medical use, transport, and useful manufacturing.
- serf 3mo agoit's dead accurate for you because it aligns with your ideas on the subject. if it had been for defense or some other such thing the media outlet wanted to celebrate it'd have been worded "Our defense apparatus sips only 23% of the country's power!" tl;dr : accuracy isn't what aligns to personal interests, and journalists who choose to use language like this are (generally speaking) disinterested in accuracy and honesty as top priorities.
- coldtea 3mo agoAccurate is what reflects reality. Reality isn't neutral. Some things are bad, and worsen society, and others are good. "Neutral reporting" presents a false equivalence between different options that seldom are equal. And of course itself is based on an "idea on the subject": that the role of reporting is to have no values aside from information transmission. The specific objection is even more bizarre: yes, if it was for something else it would have been worded differently. That's like there being a car accident described as "tragic" and someone objecting that if it was a wedding or a sports win that had happened instead they'd have described them as positive. Sure. Because they're different things.
- fc417fc802 3mo agoDid they pay market rate? Are they negatively affecting the other consumers through some unpriced externality? If they're such a burden then why is the government tolerating them?
- ralusek 3mo agoGuess if people who write articles like LLMs
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago"Unwanted industrial users consuming over 1/5th Ireland's electricity." (Ireland has challenges getting enough renewable energy to the island, as well as connecting the northern and southern parts with transmission due to local citizens not friendly to the need for transmission infra; data centers do not belong in Ireland, build them in countries in Europe that have excess clean energy, Spain and France specifically, and eat any latency as unavoidable)
- trollbridge 3mo agoYeah, but Ireland has a looser regulatory environment where it’s easier for a data centre operator to buy off the relevant government regulators.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- hunterpayne 3mo agoWhich is most of Ireland's economy. I am fine with pulling the plug on them. They are not. I mean, who wants to lose 2/3rd of their GDP overnight?
- trollbridge 3mo agoSuch are the perils of democracy. Sometimes people actually want that growth and don’t want to be a zero growth state forever.
- alephnerd 3mo ago> data centers do not belong in Ireland... Data Centers have been the cornerstone of Ireland's economy since the mid-2000s when the IDA began wooing tech FDI specifically by calling out data center expansion opportunities within the EU [0]. Also, if Europeans actually wish to have a sovereign tech industry, they need domestic compute capacity. Complaining about American tech dependency and then immediately complaining about steps to build EU tech sovereignty is literally a contradiction. [0] - https://www.siliconrepublic.com/science/ireland-has-the-potential-to-become-the-worlds-green-data-centre-capital https://www.siliconrepublic.com/science/ireland-has-the-pote...
- zzgo 3mo agoIs The Register known for objectively reporting facts? If so, I have fundamentally misunderstood it for a quarter century.
- JumpCrisscross 3mo ago> objectively reporting facts? I believe so. They're not known for neutrally reporting them, which is different.
- antonvs 3mo agoDo Ireland's data centers objectively "guzzle" electricity? I don't have any problem with The Register, but reporting laden with value-judging adjectives is not objective.
- teamonkey 3mo agoObjectively, yes. It means to consume excessive or plentiful amounts of something, and 23% of Ireland’s electricity generation capability is objectively an excessive and plentiful amount.
- antonvs 3mo agoThe characterization as “excessive” is subjective. If you disagree, what are your objective criteria for making that claim? You fundamentally can’t give a correct answer to that, because it requires defining a threshold, and that’s subjective. If people seriously think claims like this are “objective”, I weep for our collective understanding of reality.
- teamonkey 3mo agoOf course it’s excessive. Questions should be asked about any one industry using 23% of a nation’s generating capacity, when it was not built for this purpose. Of course it’s excessive. Ireland’s electricity is not cheap or in such plentiful supply that homes are not affective by this. These data centres are driving up the electricity prices for everyone in Ireland. Of course it’s excessive. There are only 80 datacentres that used 7.8TWh between them in 2025. That amount of power is used by only the heaviest of industries; it’s 3x more power than the UK steel industry uses, for example. Of course it’s excessive. The amount of energy used means that more fossil fuels is being used to power them than would otherwise be necessary. Legislation has been written so that new datacentres must in future provide their own [fossil fuel] generators. This in a time of man-made climate change where we all urgently need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It’s not just excessive, it’s deeply irresponsible.
- coldtea 3mo ago>What's the word for this type of propaganda, where they add in some sort of adjective that wasn't needed, in order to prime the reader on how to think/feel, rather than just objectively reporting the facts? It's called an editorial. It's not supposed to be a mere report, concerned with respecting any random person's feeling about how all electricity consumption is equally valid and should be equally respected.
- fc417fc802 3mo agoIt's called a value judgment and an emotionally charged tone. That's certainly a form of editorial but IMO not the good kind. If an outlet seeks to advocate for a cause it ought to do so in a well reasoned manner and with a professional tone.
- beepbooptheory 3mo agoCan you link to any examples of a good editorial by this measure?
- kevinpet 3mo agoEditorials are a thing. This is not an editorial. It's structured as a news report.
- hunterpayne 3mo agoCredibility is a thing. Articles like this burn it quite quickly. It really is past time that the scientific community needs to make a public statement rejecting these types of "journalists".
- coldtea 3mo agoThe scientific community has burned a lot of credibility itself to make any kind of statement to that effect.
- 3mo ago
- fabian2k 3mo agoJournalism is allowed to have an opinion, that doesn't make it propaganda.
- peab 3mo agothere's an unnatural amount of doomerism against datacenters, of exactly this kind. It's pretty obviously astroturfed.
- kridsdale3 3mo agoIn case you didn't know, The Register has been deliberately using this kind of language about ALL topics for nearly 30 years. It's part of their appeal and brand, like The Onion. People choose to read The Register because they have this adversarial stance and humorous tone about tech.
- vkou 3mo agoThe vast majority of the pro-datacenter 'externalities don't matter as long as I make money' is also pretty obviously astroturfed. The difference is that much of the communication on that end happens in backchannels, directly with the regulators, in secret meetings, without any possibility of public scrutiny. (When that isn't enough, the firehose of paid advertisements gets fired up to convince the public, instead.)
- hunterpayne 3mo agoThe vast majority of the anti-datacenter movement is funded by the CCP. That's why it is so lacking in facts. Most datacenters use closed loop cooling. That means it doesn't consume water for anything more than the toilets and water fountains. Yet this talking point pops up in almost every article on the topic. Part of the reason you are seeing closed door meetings now is because leaders know that the public is profoundly misinformed on this topic. It doesn't help when AOC is waving a jar of dirty water as if it is proof of something.
- cindyllm 3mo ago
- egypturnash 3mo agoI see you've never read The Register before. Their whole value proposition is "here is computing news from cynical, snarky viewpoint". Their motto "Biting the hand that feeds IT" has vanished from the masthead but it's still in their footer.
- kazinator 3mo ago> They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". That's objectively described by "guzzle".
- mikestew 3mo agoFirst time reading The Register, is it? Because I would expect no less from such a pillar of journalism as them.
- hinkley 3mo agoI haven't found a single source of Irish power mix over time but what I did find suggests that the amount of renewable power in Ireland has been spiking aggressively in recent years. I see something like 15% in 2024 from one source and >40% in 2026 from another. One chart (which I just found reproduced on wikipedia) of wind power is going up at like 600 GWh per year.
- anigbrowl 3mo agoThe Register is famous for its jaundiced takes, which are a mix of journalistic cynicism and parody of the febrile language of the UK tabloid press. You are not meant to take it at face value.
- onel 3mo agoI agree that this title is very opinionated. If the country would have created enough electricity, the percentage wouldn't be a problem