Comment Re:Disinformation damages everybody. (Score 1) 86
Fair point, though in the case of datacenters, there's not a whole lot they need to even exaggerate in terms of downsides.
Whatever the upsides may be of these datacenters, those are diluted across the reach of the internet and the local community does not particularly benefit. That's the whole point of modern technology, that the reach of a datacenter is far and is run so efficiently you don't even need local labor.
The downsides are conversely concentrated. In global context, the datacenter downsides are generally not even notable, but the datacenters focus those downsides into select local areas. Strains on local power grids and water systems, demanding new power lines be ran, blight on the landscape, and so on.
Instead of trying to create local upsides, they call the criticism fabricated by foreign actors. They could be doing things like proposing municipal "permanent funds", *actually* paying for all of the inflicted infrastructure costs (when they do claim to, usually they do a dance like "well *that* new power plant is for residents, *our* power comes from the existing plant so we shouldn't have to pay for it)", or at the very bare minimum at *least* paying the taxes they are supposed to pay instead of getting breaks.