posted in Technology
Americans’ views of data centers have turned more negative
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1424047/americans-views-of-data-centers-have-turned-more-negative
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/09/22/americans-views-of-data-centers-have-turned-more-negative/
Replying to @beep@piefed.world
What I dislike is the lumping of all datacenters into one hated bucket. I suspect people don’t realize that, for example, the fediverse… exists in datacenters. Take away datacenters and the entire internet goes away.
I think what people don’t want is a bunch of shitty datacenters (meaning using shitty power sources, for example) that are being built for AI or massive government/private data over-reach.
You WANT some datacenters…
This is like being against… prepared food. Sure, cooking from scratch is better, but outlaw all prepared foods and now you will be exhausted cooking every single day. We depend on some prepared foods. What we want is less added sugar, more healthy prepared foods, safer food, at a lower cost. We want improvements, not a complete ban.
Same with datacenters.
Replying to @daychilde@lemmy.world
That poor rural communities should subsidize data centers’ water and electrical consumption so that random websites can be cheaper to maintain is a weird argument but okay.
Data centers are currently unregulated, inefficient, ecologically destructive resource pits parasitical on poor communities. That’s the problem. A simple solution would be to sell them water and electricity at 1000x the cost per gallon of a regular household. If that doesn’t encourage innovation, just require data centers to purify wastewater and generate their own clean energy! Problem solved.
Replying to @yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
There is unfortunately a lot of propaganda on this subject, and it’s quite aggravating how much of the public has just bought into these ideas. A data center is no less “ecologically destructive” than any other large building project, like a meat processing plant or chemical plant, except they don’t even have to worry about food safety or chemical pollution. The only novel things about a data center are:
Does that need some level of mitigation? Of course. But, the current attitude makes people believe that they are on the level of some nuclear waste processing facility.
purify wastewater and generate their own clean energy
These are jobs for other facilities. A data center, just like 99.999% of the other buildings, are just going to buy whatever electricity is already on the grid.
If you want clean energy, promote more alternatives on the grid. Electricity is only as clean as whatever your local power plant provides.
Replying to @p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
data centers are like a meat processing plants
…which cause ecological devastation at an unimaginable scale and give poor communities cancer, so your comparison is apt.
purify wastewater and generate their own clean energy
These are jobs for other facilities.
Not anymore. Townships cannot be made responsible for the pet projects of billionaires, nor is it their job to subsidize the internet. Get your own water and clean energy or fuck off.
I want to emphasize that this is a massive compromise since my first choice is [redacted].
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