I'd pretty much oppose anything Kevin O'leary was involved in, too.

[delayed]

I think you’re too focused on the actual facts. My take: people hate them because they are a physical manifestation of the tech bro billionaires.

A farm produces food that people can eat. A data center runs AI that takes people's jobs and produces... vibe coded websites that look like trash.

You gotta sell it to the voters and so far no one can because it's garbage they didn't ask for

> I really just have to come to the conclusion that we have a tiktok informed voting block here.

i thought personal attacks and perjoratives arent allowed on HN? hmm

>I really just have to come to the conclusion that we have a tiktok informed voting block here. I've had people ask me if I'm worried that the new data center will spy on me.

Silicon Valley and it's kool-aid chugging autists have fucked America in the ass one time too many, methinks.

data centers = billionare scheme to take all our jobs away and enslave us.

Its not that hard to understand or deserves any gotcha questions. Maybe they should ask you how exactly do you plan to feed your family once all the jobs are gone and only ppl who have any say are data center owners. God i hate "well actually" tech nerds so much.

[dead]

People are pissed that Big Tech/VC/SV has taken over seemingly everything, enshittified it, and enriched the enshittifiers (while the economy has gotten worse for nearly everyone else, and Big Tech's fucking insane leaders have gone full steam ahead at destroying the social contract--literally in some cases by eviscertating whole swaths of the American federal government, and probably illegally at that--and funding the campiagns of those who seek to shield Big Tech from liability.). All this despite having come onto the scene under the guise of "Don't Be Evil" and "Think Different." Data Centers are the most visible manifestation of this ugly side of Big Tech/VC/SV, and ugly in and of themselves; thus, it is not surprising that people roundly reject them. There is (because of the timing of this inflection point--upward--in data centers and inflection point--downward--in economic sentiment/reality) probably also some post hoc ergo propter hoc or temporal-correlation-as-causation going on here too.

The thing is, it takes a pretty coherent worldview of Big Tech, VC economics, politics, etc., to state above as such, so I am not surprised (in a time when education, too, is being destroyed--often by Big Tech itself) most people can't articulate it. 1 in 5 american adults is functionally illiterate, after all.

If you believe all of those counter points will hold true for even a month after operation starts you're real naive. People driving the plans to build out this infrastructure do not care about a single point listed there and will lie to get it over the line.

> The county is gaining water from this

All farming should be stopped immediately and converted to data centres, then we’ll have unlimited water!

It's a Chinese psy-op. There are legitimate reasons to want to regulate data center noise, but that's an eminently solvable problem. The out-of-proportion reaction you're seeing is driven by misinformation.

Just come to Georgia and talk to actual people living here after a data center moved in. You know, like this: https://youtu.be/4A6NECilAls

Also: Why the actual fuck is it taking AOC (who doesn't even live here) to ask these questions and connect the dots publicly.

And "This is going to bring a LOT of money to my county which sorely needs it and a LOT of people to my dying rural town." is a pipe dream. If you're honest about it, I think you know that.

"I really just have to come to the conclusion that we have a tiktok informed voting block here." sounds like you're trying to insult whole groups of people. But if you get your news from Fox news, this isn't the insult you think it is.

I don't trust the datacenter side of the table at all. I don't trust their claims. I don't trust their numbers. We have myriad examples of their lies. Do we have any examples of them being good corporate citizens that offset this?

I don't trust that local communities have any recourse if/when the datacenter changes the terms, violates agreements, poisons the air and ground and water, loses interest and leaves the area to deal with the mess on its own, and so on. Moneyed interests have bought legislators and directed them to quietly advance projects that don't help the local constituents, and then hide behind contract law when what they are doing is clearly bad for regular people.

There is literally zero reason to trust these folks, and every reason to be skeptical. They have shown themselves to be unrepentant bad actors time and time again. Why should we allow any of this without requiring real guarantees and protections for local communities?

It will not bring tax money or permanent jobs to your town. What are the tax offsets that are being promised to developers to get them to build there, and how are these going to help fund local services? The same people responsible for the hollowing out of your rural town are now telling you that they're going to fix it.

If you truly think having a >GW AI datacenter in your town is going to benefit you and your neighbors then I don't know what to tell you. It's like listening to someone tell you about how the stripper really is into him. Good luck

> "It'll use too much water." - It's going to use less water than the farm that used to run on this land. The county is gaining water from this.

comparing water for food(?) is a bit crazy to compare water for AI speculation

There are a lot of good reasons to have data center moratoriums and it's so they can be regulated at the federal level and every city has to start at the same starting line. You currently have data centers doing a race to the bottom between desperate cities