3 ms·

Data center opponents stage 142 protests across 42 US states

47 points by 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago

periodjet 3mo ago
Totally organic.
- jsiepkes 3mo ago
  Maybe, maybe not. But there are apparently plenty people who want to participate in it. Which says something.
- simianwords 3mo ago
  It is completely organic and it is not new at all. Every step change in technology involved people like this (though this one is a bit unique in size). This type of thinking: "slowing down", "being in harmony with nature", "be content with what you have" is the default mode of thinking for most rich/educated people. (Note: this type of thinking comes at the upper echelons of Maslow's needs - impoverished third worlders don't have takes on it) What I think is that most have had enough of chaotic progress and they just want some inkling of stability and some breathing space to even contemplate on the last 20 years of change. What they are instead seeing is a barrage of stuff thrown at them one after the other. I can understand them. And so should all of us. The suggestion that this is a CCP play shows a lack of theory of mind.
  - ronsor 3mo ago
    I think both explanations are not mutually exclusive.
  - TitaRusell 3mo ago
    People are perfectly content to accept pollution if it provides actual jobs not just money for tech bro douchebags living on a yacht in Tahiti. Instead of buying politicians if you want to build a datacenter start sponsoring the local high school gymnastics club. And for fuck sake never talk about how much you hate society and want to put people out of a job. Silicon Valley is so terrible at PR. They could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the early 20th century.
    - simianwords 3mo ago
      > start sponsoring the local high school gymnastics club I would prefer using taxes instead of one-off theatrical gestures. And it looks like data centres already pay tax. Maybe what you want is higher taxes? Possibly a good idea if it doesn't disincentivise the construction in the first place.
      - jazzyjackson 3mo ago
        What they want is neighbors invested in the same future as they are. “AI data centers” are just a very blunt expression of an industry that is banking on making schools, careers, and even interpersonal relationships obsolete. We used to start wars over this kind of threat to our “way of life”
    - jjmarr 3mo ago
      > People are perfectly content to accept pollution if it provides actual jobs not just money for tech bro douchebags living on a yacht in Tahiti. > And for fuck sake never talk about how much you hate society and want to put people out of a job. Let's say for the sake of argument, AI eliminates most jobs. In that case, the government will need to replace income tax. Will the American government have an easier time taxing the physical datacenter in the United States or the billionaire that owns it in Tahiti? And will the American government have any ability to tax a datacenter built in Dubai because there was too much bureaucracy in Virginia? > They could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the early 20th century. We could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the 18th century, who built all their infrastructure in the United Kingdom because it was convenient for them. The British government's early advantage in factories snowballed into the largest empire on Earth and they maintained the advantage until WW2.
      - mittensc 3mo ago
        > Will the American government have an easier time taxing the physical datacenter in the United States or the billionaire that owns it in Tahiti? The datacenters already get long term tax deductions, probably easier to tax the billionaire's assets with a wealth tax on stock market assets...
  - thegrim33 3mo ago
    >> The suggestion that this is a CCP play shows a lack of theory of mind. As if destruction / denigration of US AI / cloud / IT infrastructure wouldn't massively benefit the CCP. Surely there's no correlation there at all, just means, motive, and opportunity, but I'm sure it's nothing.
    - mittensc 3mo ago
      other side: what benefit does an AI datacenter bring to a community? why wouldn't people complain? on that note, if LLMs dissappeared tomorrow, what would be the loss for common folk? Solution seems simple, build them away from communities, arrange for sustainable power generation and water use, problem is that eats into datacenter profits...
  - watwut 3mo ago
    I haven't heard neither "being in harmony with nature", "be content with what you have", you are literally making them up. But more importantly, it is not true that every step was like this. In my lifetime, AI is uniquely disliked and it is really its own fault. No other technology was booed in speeches, no other had equivalents of tokenmaxxing and top down push, no other promised dystopia and doom and gloom as selling strategy.
    - fragmede 3mo ago
      > No other technology was booed in speeches NFTs, DRM, Linux at Microsoft conferences, Microsoft at Linux conferences, Google Glass, blockchain. Those have all been booed at some point. AI's not unique in that regard.
      - watwut 3mo ago
        All of them are either harmful or gambling. And gambling is harmful. Like, people booging SBF or Holmes or Shkreli also does not prove anything about universal hate of tech. It is people booing frauds. I give them that no one was idiotic enough to try to push NFT and crypto on students in commencement speech.
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
  - cindyllm 3mo ago
    [dead]
jurschreuder 3mo ago
The biggest change is that the left have become the conservatives
- simianwords 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - gremlinunderway 3mo ago
    "Neo-luddite" is thrown around by people who don't actually know history and just eat up terminology that was spoonfed to them for a purpose. FYI, the luddite movement wasn't some stupid movement against technology for the sake of being against technology like the eventual term evolved into. Historically, they were skilled artisans who were protesting exploitative working conditions and practices that came about as a result of automation. When some of them started destroying machines, the British government subsequently made it a capital crime to do machine-breaking and violently suppressed these protests and controlled the narrative that the reason luddites were breaking machines was because they were ignorant people who hated progress. Not ironically, you're eating up the same propaganda brought to you by the likes of Thiel and co. that the people protesting legitimate grievances just simply "hate technology".
    - simianwords 3mo ago
      Interesting, do you think the current form of anti technology ideology is different from Luddism? In what way? Do you mean to say that the current protests are actually against technology for the sake of being against technology? Also, I don't say that they are against technology for technology's sake, but the real actual reason they are against technology is because they are fundamentally conservative. They act in their own self interest as normal people do and try to conserve their status, employment and lifestyle. Technology tends to act against it - naturally they oppose it.
      - watwut 3mo ago
        > They act in their own self interest as normal people do and try to conserve their status, employment and lifestyle. Technology tends to act against it - naturally they oppose it. Why is the underlying assumption that tech must make life of people worst? That the only way tech can advance is by actively creating dystopia, by harming, by disrupting instead of creating better opportunities for people? Tech changed, from positive to pure anti-human sociopathy. It used to have positive vision and many people in it actually wanted to help actual people. Then the SV pretended to want to create something good while not caring whether they were harming people. Now they stopped even pretending to want to create something good while actively openly trying to cause harm. For christ sake, look at art. These companies could have been creating better and empowering tools for artists. Instead, they brag about destroying them, about destroying everything art communities like and then blame the victime for not being happy with that.
stevenalowe 3mo ago
"The protests were coordinated by HumansFirst, co-founded by a former leader of the modern-day Tea Party." Stopped reading there.
- mindslight 3mo ago
  There are legitimate frustrations behind reactionaries' anger. Even if you don't personally share them, it would behoove you to understand them. The Tea Party era is when the movement really started listing towards populist-expedience-grift, but that doesn't automatically indict its leaders per se - especially if they're now on a topic you might care about. And yes, I know it's unfair to ask you to do the work of understanding and addressing frustrations that aren't your own, when reactionaries won't even do this work - instead throwing their support behind a con man like Grump and declaring it's all one big joke. But someone has to, right?
  - stevenalowe 3mo ago
    No. The tea party was a clown show, no reason to expect anything different from this
    - mindslight 3mo ago
      "Clown show" kind of implies a limited scope and general harmlessness, no? The legacy of that "clown show" is currently selling our country's institutions for scrap value, so that term would seem to massively undersell its actual effects.
      - gwerbin 3mo ago
        Clown shows are entertaining and distracting, and all the foibles and silliness is a carefully-calibrated act. Sounds apt to me.
      - stevenalowe 3mo ago
        when a clown moves into the palace, the palace becomes a circus

47 points by 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago

periodjet 3mo ago

Totally organic.

jsiepkes 3mo ago
Maybe, maybe not. But there are apparently plenty people who want to participate in it. Which says something.
simianwords 3mo ago
It is completely organic and it is not new at all. Every step change in technology involved people like this (though this one is a bit unique in size). This type of thinking: "slowing down", "being in harmony with nature", "be content with what you have" is the default mode of thinking for most rich/educated people. (Note: this type of thinking comes at the upper echelons of Maslow's needs - impoverished third worlders don't have takes on it) What I think is that most have had enough of chaotic progress and they just want some inkling of stability and some breathing space to even contemplate on the last 20 years of change. What they are instead seeing is a barrage of stuff thrown at them one after the other. I can understand them. And so should all of us. The suggestion that this is a CCP play shows a lack of theory of mind.
- ronsor 3mo ago
  I think both explanations are not mutually exclusive.
- TitaRusell 3mo ago
  People are perfectly content to accept pollution if it provides actual jobs not just money for tech bro douchebags living on a yacht in Tahiti. Instead of buying politicians if you want to build a datacenter start sponsoring the local high school gymnastics club. And for fuck sake never talk about how much you hate society and want to put people out of a job. Silicon Valley is so terrible at PR. They could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the early 20th century.
  - simianwords 3mo ago
    > start sponsoring the local high school gymnastics club I would prefer using taxes instead of one-off theatrical gestures. And it looks like data centres already pay tax. Maybe what you want is higher taxes? Possibly a good idea if it doesn't disincentivise the construction in the first place.
    - jazzyjackson 3mo ago
      What they want is neighbors invested in the same future as they are. “AI data centers” are just a very blunt expression of an industry that is banking on making schools, careers, and even interpersonal relationships obsolete. We used to start wars over this kind of threat to our “way of life”
  - jjmarr 3mo ago
    > People are perfectly content to accept pollution if it provides actual jobs not just money for tech bro douchebags living on a yacht in Tahiti. > And for fuck sake never talk about how much you hate society and want to put people out of a job. Let's say for the sake of argument, AI eliminates most jobs. In that case, the government will need to replace income tax. Will the American government have an easier time taxing the physical datacenter in the United States or the billionaire that owns it in Tahiti? And will the American government have any ability to tax a datacenter built in Dubai because there was too much bureaucracy in Virginia? > They could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the early 20th century. We could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the 18th century, who built all their infrastructure in the United Kingdom because it was convenient for them. The British government's early advantage in factories snowballed into the largest empire on Earth and they maintained the advantage until WW2.
    - mittensc 3mo ago
      > Will the American government have an easier time taxing the physical datacenter in the United States or the billionaire that owns it in Tahiti? The datacenters already get long term tax deductions, probably easier to tax the billionaire's assets with a wealth tax on stock market assets...
- thegrim33 3mo ago
  >> The suggestion that this is a CCP play shows a lack of theory of mind. As if destruction / denigration of US AI / cloud / IT infrastructure wouldn't massively benefit the CCP. Surely there's no correlation there at all, just means, motive, and opportunity, but I'm sure it's nothing.
  - mittensc 3mo ago
    other side: what benefit does an AI datacenter bring to a community? why wouldn't people complain? on that note, if LLMs dissappeared tomorrow, what would be the loss for common folk? Solution seems simple, build them away from communities, arrange for sustainable power generation and water use, problem is that eats into datacenter profits...
- watwut 3mo ago
  I haven't heard neither "being in harmony with nature", "be content with what you have", you are literally making them up. But more importantly, it is not true that every step was like this. In my lifetime, AI is uniquely disliked and it is really its own fault. No other technology was booed in speeches, no other had equivalents of tokenmaxxing and top down push, no other promised dystopia and doom and gloom as selling strategy.
  - fragmede 3mo ago
    > No other technology was booed in speeches NFTs, DRM, Linux at Microsoft conferences, Microsoft at Linux conferences, Google Glass, blockchain. Those have all been booed at some point. AI's not unique in that regard.
    - watwut 3mo ago
      All of them are either harmful or gambling. And gambling is harmful. Like, people booging SBF or Holmes or Shkreli also does not prove anything about universal hate of tech. It is people booing frauds. I give them that no one was idiotic enough to try to push NFT and crypto on students in commencement speech.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
- cindyllm 3mo ago
  [dead]

jurschreuder 3mo ago

The biggest change is that the left have become the conservatives

simianwords 3mo ago
[flagged]
- gremlinunderway 3mo ago
  "Neo-luddite" is thrown around by people who don't actually know history and just eat up terminology that was spoonfed to them for a purpose. FYI, the luddite movement wasn't some stupid movement against technology for the sake of being against technology like the eventual term evolved into. Historically, they were skilled artisans who were protesting exploitative working conditions and practices that came about as a result of automation. When some of them started destroying machines, the British government subsequently made it a capital crime to do machine-breaking and violently suppressed these protests and controlled the narrative that the reason luddites were breaking machines was because they were ignorant people who hated progress. Not ironically, you're eating up the same propaganda brought to you by the likes of Thiel and co. that the people protesting legitimate grievances just simply "hate technology".
  - simianwords 3mo ago
    Interesting, do you think the current form of anti technology ideology is different from Luddism? In what way? Do you mean to say that the current protests are actually against technology for the sake of being against technology? Also, I don't say that they are against technology for technology's sake, but the real actual reason they are against technology is because they are fundamentally conservative. They act in their own self interest as normal people do and try to conserve their status, employment and lifestyle. Technology tends to act against it - naturally they oppose it.
    - watwut 3mo ago
      > They act in their own self interest as normal people do and try to conserve their status, employment and lifestyle. Technology tends to act against it - naturally they oppose it. Why is the underlying assumption that tech must make life of people worst? That the only way tech can advance is by actively creating dystopia, by harming, by disrupting instead of creating better opportunities for people? Tech changed, from positive to pure anti-human sociopathy. It used to have positive vision and many people in it actually wanted to help actual people. Then the SV pretended to want to create something good while not caring whether they were harming people. Now they stopped even pretending to want to create something good while actively openly trying to cause harm. For christ sake, look at art. These companies could have been creating better and empowering tools for artists. Instead, they brag about destroying them, about destroying everything art communities like and then blame the victime for not being happy with that.

stevenalowe 3mo ago

"The protests were coordinated by HumansFirst, co-founded by a former leader of the modern-day Tea Party." Stopped reading there.

mindslight 3mo ago
There are legitimate frustrations behind reactionaries' anger. Even if you don't personally share them, it would behoove you to understand them. The Tea Party era is when the movement really started listing towards populist-expedience-grift, but that doesn't automatically indict its leaders per se - especially if they're now on a topic you might care about. And yes, I know it's unfair to ask you to do the work of understanding and addressing frustrations that aren't your own, when reactionaries won't even do this work - instead throwing their support behind a con man like Grump and declaring it's all one big joke. But someone has to, right?
- stevenalowe 3mo ago
  No. The tea party was a clown show, no reason to expect anything different from this
  - mindslight 3mo ago
    "Clown show" kind of implies a limited scope and general harmlessness, no? The legacy of that "clown show" is currently selling our country's institutions for scrap value, so that term would seem to massively undersell its actual effects.
    - gwerbin 3mo ago
      Clown shows are entertaining and distracting, and all the foibles and silliness is a carefully-calibrated act. Sounds apt to me.
    - stevenalowe 3mo ago
      when a clown moves into the palace, the palace becomes a circus