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No Data Centers in My Backyard
- rimbo789 2mo agoSolid article. Outlines well why no one wants these things. I hope it helps more communities fight these and ensure almost none get built
- gandhiandy69 2mo agoI hope it also helps investors and hyperscalers to understand the risk of losing the trust of the public.
- mirzap 2mo agoThe majority of people opposed AC current, cars, steam engines, rail tracks, airplanes, computers, the internet, and so on. There was always irrational fear present with new tech advances. People opposing data centers will not look any less foolish than those who opposed AC current.
- Kwantuum 2mo agoI don't think the people who opposed those things look foolish even today. Most of those things, in their early days, were implemented haphazardly and with an incredible lack of regulatory oversight, and the reason they were not quite as disastrous as they could have been is that people opposed them. And people opposing data centers today who are opposing unfettered data center creations will not look any *more* foolish than those who opposed the things you cite.
- mirzap 2mo agoI used the softer word "foolish" - but in reality, they are idiots. Yes, they are, and they will look like idiots in the future when China wins the AI race. In the same way, nuclear opponents are idiots and have contributed to the decline in nuclear research in the West over the past 50 years (looking at you, Europe, especially Germany), while China keeps advancing its nuclear research (fission and fusion as well) and building nuclear plants to ensure its future energy independence and dominance.
- inigyou 2mo agoWhat, exactly, are we racing for? Smarter chatboxes? Nuclear plants are being forced to shut down in this heat wave, due to low river levels, as they don't have enough head pressure to run their cooling pumps and if they had different pumps their waste heat would sterilize the river. I'm sure China has no qualms about sterilising rivers but the next, hotter, heat wave will dry them up anyway, and they'll still have to turn the plants off.
- mirzap 2mo agoJust proving my point. "Hey, look, AC current can kill you. We must stop this nonsense" https://www.wired.com/2012/01/0104edison-uses-ac-to-kill-elephant/ https://www.wired.com/2012/01/0104edison-uses-ac-to-kill-ele...
- inigyou 2mo agoWhat are we racing for? Smarter chatboxes?
- DangitBobby 2mo ago[dead]
- inigyou 2mo agoI need evidence for all of these please.
- blitzar 2mo agoThere were even some complete and utter fools who said Asbestos wasnt all that.
- inigyou 2mo agoData centers are fine if planned and built properly, which they never are in this AI shovel rush. (Remember, in a shovel rush, sell casting machines)
- afavour 2mo agoSome of the reaction to data center build outs has become irrational but frankly I see it as a reflection of the arrogance of the billionaire tech elite. Voters were told: - AI is going to take your jobs - We need to build our data centers for this job stealing tool - We need to build so quickly that there’s no time to do accurate assessments of what this will do to water or power supplies Turns out people don’t like that. Who could have guessed? Anyone not living in a bubble.
- BikiniPrince 2mo ago[flagged]
- shib71 2mo agoDo you have evidence? Because that claim doesn't pass the sniff test - why would people who have large amounts of money care about data centers?
- inigyou 2mo agoReads like classic projection to me. Always accuse the other side of what your side is doing.
- inemesitaffia 2mo agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/business/china-russia-ai-data-centers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/business/china-russia-ai-...
- thrance 2mo ago"Everyone that disagrees with me is a bot or paid propaganda". Sure, go tell yourself that. The money is clearly on the pro-AI camp, and you'd have to be delusional to think it isn't.
- blitzar 2mo agohow many orders of magnitude less than the money flowing into building data centers? 6 or 7?
- gyanchawdhary 2mo ago[flagged]
- ErroneousBosh 2mo agoThat's a bit racist isn't it?
- afavour 2mo agoNo, it was as a comment about the Chinese government, not something inherent in the Chinese race
- gyanchawdhary 2mo agowhat’s racist ? are you okay ?
- ErroneousBosh 2mo agoDidn't you see it?
- gyanchawdhary 2mo ago[flagged]
- zkmon 2mo agoPeople in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.
- decimalenough 2mo agoHow are they "far worse"? Steam trains are noisy, polluting, require tons of coal, kill animals and people in their way, and crash fairly regularly (when built with 1800s technology). A data center is a big grey box that sits there humming quietly, and that's it. They do require power and lots of it, but unlikely steam engines they'll happily use solar, nuclear or anything else.
- StilesCrisis 2mo agoData centers are quite loud.
- mapontosevenths 2mo agoI worked in a data center for a decade. None of the neighbors even knew what it was. One actually stopped me to ask. It was very loud inside, but you couldn't hear it from outside unless the power failed and the generators came on.
- inigyou 2mo agoThe new AI ones are built below minimum standards as a cash grab and they somehow manage to be as loud as jet engines. I have no idea how they manage to achieve that, but I try to avoid denying reality. I agree that an ordinary non-AI data center is no worse than an office building without the people, but that isn't what's happening right now.
- mapontosevenths 2mo ago
- Planktonne 2mo agoThe article is interesting, but I think it dances around what should be a central point, only approaching it obliquely. A lot of the opposition to data centers isn't about specific claimed benefits/drawbacks, but the fact that the people behind them are known to be bad actors. > My conversations make me wonder if the technical content of data center deals is mostly beside the point. Closed-loop cooling systems? “I don’t believe them.” Paying millions in taxes? “I don’t believe them.” Creating a thousand jobs? “I don’t believe them.” I hear a reflexive skepticism of every claim. It's not reflexive; it's evidenced. Regardless of what big tech promises, or potential mitigations, everyone knows what tech companies do now. It's not a generalised small-town lack of trust in big city folks, it's a direct response to decades of extractive behaviour by the same companies and people. Essentially, I think there's a proximal reputational problem for AI companies, which the article calls out, but the ultimate problem is factual. It's not an education/communication/negotiation issue, because the real problem is the underlying reality. The wolf at the door being distrusted is because it's a wolf, not PR.
- elliotpage 2mo agoAs you say, the distrust is backed up by evidence and by their own personal experience of the same promises getting trotted out time after time, generation after generation. These people, these communities, have been promised these same things before (or things adjacent to them) and have seen them not deliver, or even make their situation worse. This is especially true of the tax income and job generation elements. The estimates provided as part of the deal are utterly divorced from reality- people know it and refuse to take part in the kayfabe that surrounds it.
- YackerLose 2mo agoFool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice -- can't get fooled again. - actual Dubya quote
- inigyou 2mo agoAn early form of anti-clipchimping. He would not say the words "shame on me".
- comrade1234 2mo agoI have a property in NW Wisconsin. It's incredibly poor there - it seems like most people working age are on disability - the new form of welfare. Money is earned mostly in summer and hunting seasons. It's pretty depressing. Lots of alcohol problems. I hired someone to clear some trees and make lumber out of them once and he showed up for the job three months later. At least he showed up though. Weirdest thing - he never came back after the job to get paid. I end up often hiring contractors from 90 miles away to get good ones. But a data center wouldn't help. It would raise electric prices and doesn't really employ people. It's kind of like one industry that is in the area - there's a company that grows huge amounts of cranberries but its mostly automated. As far as I know only three people work on this huge site. They let the cranberries grow, flood the area when they're ready. The cranberries float to the top for robots to skim the surface and harvest them. The humans just move things around for the robots.
- ianm218 2mo agoIf the data center was paying a decent amount of taxes surely it would help though right? In theory the taxes would go towards pro social uses.
- tyromaniac 2mo agoWorth checking out https://buildermuse.com/economy/every-state-offering-data-center-tax-incentives/ https://buildermuse.com/economy/every-state-offering-data-ce...
- deadbunny 2mo agoWhich would be a good argument if the datacenters actually paid any taxes. They shop around for tens to hundreds of millions in tax breaks from officials who believe the lies like "we'll create thousands of jobs!".
- ofrzeta 2mo agoTFA cites "Each project requires thousands of skilled workers during the two to six year construction period (nearly 10,000 in Mount Pleasant)" so maybe it's not totally fiction (at least during build time).
- alexpotato 2mo agoI found the below line to get particularly "hard": > When I visited DC in February to start researching the brewing AI backlash, I found that the top two uniting issues were kids’ safety and data centers.1 These were very different concerns from those I hear in San Francisco—a city with no kids and no data centers
- mapping365 2mo agoIt's an elite project, being forced on us without having any choice. It is worsening inflation. It is increasing inequality. It is threatening careers. It has cheapened human creativity. Just look at how the elite of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and politics are coalescing to absurd lengths to fund and build these things. Why wouldn't you be suspicious...
- inigyou 2mo agoInflation and inequality are driven by the money printer far more than AI. The money printer is also driving AI, because there's far more supply of money than sensible investments to put it in.
- blitzar 2mo agoThe power lines (seemingly everywhere) are pretty offensive on the eyes.
- Avicebron 2mo agoAs a thought experiment why not just move the people who want them to those neighbourhoods and move the people who don't where the people who do live. I wonder how many would actually take that deal.. I suspect they wouldn't
- voidUpdate 2mo ago> "The EMF reader is shakier, going haywire under the crackling power lines, then settling down a few steps away" That kind of statement really bothers me. Is it measuring the magnetic fields or RF emissions? If it's RF, what frequency? If the EMF reader is picking up radio waves, I'm not exactly concerned. Visible light would be weird. X-rays would be very concerning. Is it just picking up the 50/60Hz power line? That's all around you in your house anyway. If you just don't like power lines, say that
- inigyou 2mo agoYeah that conspiracist nonsense should be left out when there are enough real problems like noise and electricity bills.
- ungreased0675 2mo agoA good portion of this movement is irrational and driven by viral media. Last week a coworker was talking about how unbearably loud data centers are. I asked them if our parking lot is loud. (There’s a decent sized server floor in our building and a bunch of cooling equipment in the parking lot.) They had never noticed the cooling system. On the other hand, my city gave the local data centers big tax breaks to come here. In the last couple years my property taxes have increased significantly along with my electricity bill. It seems obvious that I’m subsidizing the local data center. There’s probably a couple dozen people who work there, so it’s not a realistic employment opportunity for me or anyone I know. I’m not anti-tech at all, but I wish the city hadn’t made the deal they did. Perhaps big tech could be less parasitic and contribute beneficially to society?
- user43928 2mo agoIs it big tech's responsibility to somehow 'contribute beneficially'? Data center construction is not a welfare project. As long as there is no corruption involved, I do not see what is wrong with big tech choosing a project site where the cost is minimal. If there are many poor rural cities which compete for data center deals, this seems to me like an efficient free market. If public opinion swings, will this not influence politicians, and force big tech to provide better benefits in these deals?
- ungreased0675 2mo agoA free market is not one particular company getting a better deal on taxes than all the other businesses in the area. That’s the opposite actually.
- user43928 2mo agoThere is more than one company constructing data centers, and I am not sure what you are saying here. It is not a free market if cities offer tax breaks to data center developers to attract large projects?
- inigyou 2mo ago
- DamnInteresting 2mo agoCommon citizens aren't the only ones who prefer not to live near these unsightly noise-and-pollution centers. Look at the satellite views around tech oligarchs' homes, and you won't see any data centers anywhere near those lavish estates. Let them build it in their own backyard.
- throwaway2037 2mo agoHow about the smell when she drives past a huge industrial sized dairy farm? (There are a lot of them in Wisconsin.) They smell awful, like roll up your windows awful.
- Avrio15272 2mo ago[dead]