You are right. Most people are against scale and progress. I don’t think it’s about big tech. I don’t think it’s about data centers. I don’t think it’s about emissions or water. It’s about scale.

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CircuitSeuss 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The scale of wealth imbalance, the scale of money in politics, the scale of grocer prices, the scale of data collection and abuse of targeted price manipulation, the scale of climate catastrophe, the scale of electric bills, humming noises, draught conditions. It’s about realizing the scales are uneven, and seeing a tangible incarnation of that being built. All those problems are starting to seem awfully close to home. You can’t reach the trillionaire, but maybe you can keep it out of your back yard, so you protest the data center.

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grim_io 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's a weird way to reason about it.

Data centers polute their air, use up their water, increase their energy cost and make an unbearable noise in their neighborhood. But sure, they are simply anti progress for no reason.

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martin8412 a day ago | parent | next [-]

None of those things are inherently true. I know it’s happening with a few DCs in the US operated by scrupulous people, but it’s far from the normal.

Datacenters don’t need to use much water outside of normal office needs. They don’t need to increase energy costs. They don’t need to pollute or make any noise in normal conditions.

If they do any of those things in normal operations, it’s due to lacking regulations or the lack of enforcement of existing regulations.

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simianwords 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you think people would still oppose it if hypothetically data centres didn't use that much water? hint: this is not a hypothetical

	▲	grim_io 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's not only about the water, so there is no need to fixate on it.

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jraph 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They are not against "progress" in a vacuum.

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sensanaty 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Who gives a shit about the average SV sociopath's idea of "progress"? In this context, progress means mass surveillance, infinite AI slop flooding every single facet of our lives and replacing any human job that isn't some sort of C-suite, why on earth would people be championing this type of "progress"?