This is very wrong, please stop spreading this misinfo. I'd be happy to see you leave this community, to be honest. This is not the place for your brand of trash dumping.

Data centers consume resources and do work regardless of local load: even if local users make 5+million requests per minute (which average web use patterns suggest will be much, much lower from average users), the bulk of a new data center + peering will be done in service of FAANG, not local users.

So no local profit from data center success except maybe a slightly more reliable streaming service.

But data centers don't create local jobs, either, so local job market isnt improved either.

Datacentres are not only very often not required to pay for their infrastructure, by they often get massive tax breaks from communities that need the income.

And notice I'm leaving out water, since that is not a drawback on all datacentre types. I'm also leaving out gas-powered turbines some data centers have employed to power themselves, which is adisguating and abhorrent disregard for doing any kind of service to help slow human-induced climate change.

So:

• no local jobs
• profit leaves area
• don't contribute to the community in taxes

So tell us again why datacentres are "moral panic"?

Alternatively, as I mentioned, feel free to leave this community, and not to return.

Comments can be completely content-free, but as long as they align with “AI bad!” They get the upvotes.

Where? The only one I see is "Common sense!" with a grand total of 3 upvotes.

The comments that 'question the narrative' get downvoted because they make claims that are opposed by the evidence.

At least nuclear power has uses besides making some people lots of money. Which makes no sense because none of these companies are even profitable yet.

I think your comparison to nuclear power is very apt: it's a panic that arises from real world examples of things going terribly wrong. I agree that we should have more nuclear power, and I agree that we should have more datacenters in Canada in general, if nothing else for data sovereignty. But the public resistance is justified, just as it was after the horrors of nuclear contamination became clear: these datacenters, especially AI-compute, are power hungry and don't generate that many jobs, so it's an even worse tradeoff than a regular automotive manufacturer coming to town. The public outcry is not useless: we should use it to push the datacenters to plug into our grid responsibly and priced accordingly, collect heat waste for other uses etc

Enjoy your brown water.