A lot o the confusion around data centers is that these companies purposely hide this information from the public. We already know how damaging normal data centers are:

https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/the-dalles...

Citizens had to sue their town to force them to give up water usage, something Google was adamant about hiding from the public.

When there is no accountability, trust plummets. There is no reason to trust anything from these corpos or their pro-corpo rags.

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ssl-3 4 hours ago | parent [-]

A lot of us work for and do business with companies that purposefully hide information from the public.

That doesn't seem to be an unusual state of affairs at all; it instead seems like a very normal way of doing things.

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shimman 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh yeah it's totally normal for neoliberal America to fuck over the public at every opportunity for private corporate gain. Not going to disagree with that at all.

But if you think this is honestly a GOOD thing, you have deep anti-human sentiments.

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ssl-3 4 hours ago | parent [-]

No. That's not what I said, and you're quite clearly being disingenuously hyperbolic.

Let's calm down a bit and bring this back down to earth, shall we?

Suppose you buy your groceries from a company.

Do you have a right to inspect that company's books to evaluate things like their energy use and their water consumption?

Yes? No?

Should you have that right?

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asadotzler 2 hours ago | parent [-]

YES. I should be able to evaluate that, and many supply that. When I buy an iPhone I can see exactly what Apple's recycling and use of recycled materials looks like, for example. Environmental impact doesn't only happen within their walls, it hits us all and they have a responsibility to declare that for anyone to see, not just customers. That you think they should be able to do whatever they want behind closed doors and we all just have to suck it up is one of the reasons I'm glad to be old and not far from escaping this world of children who no longer give a shit about anything except self satisfaction.

	▲	ssl-3 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> That you think they should be able to do whatever they want behind closed doors I haven't stated an opinion here at all, nor have I defended anything. I've merely relayed some observations that I understand to be true, and I've asked some questions. But I shall now allow myself to be opinionated: You doin' ok over there, bud? You seem to be attacking the choir.