Why Everyone Hates Data Centers (And You Can, Too!)
July 17, 2026
TLDR
Data centers have become so hated that developers are now calling them "transmission of information centers." The rebrand tells you everything: from Marietta to New York, Americans of every political stripe have decided the buildings powering AI are a raw deal, and they're organizing to prove it.
What?
On Monday evening, I was one of 30 or so people who had filed into the public library conference room by the time the data center resistancr meeting started. It was a representative core sample of my purple-ish district, in my purple-ish state. They ranged from card-carrying Democratic-Socialists-of-America members with frontier-model mullets to sensible-shoe retirees looking to see what the fuss was about.
The fuss. It started on a small scale last summer, when the Marietta City Council voted 7-0 to rezone 31.4 acres at 1751 Bells Ferry Road) from “commercial” to “light industrial,” clearing the way for a new data center campus. A few residents spoke against the change, but it was not a big to-do.
But by this July, when a second developer came to the council asking to convert a Prime Storage facility on Powers Ferry Place into another data center, the to-do had gotten bigger. Much bigger.
An overflow crowd showed up, so many that officials had to keep some residents out, and inform them that they were subject to potential fines if they kept up their chants .
The council tabled the proposal and passed a moratorium on new data centers through the end of the year.
What stuck with me from that meeting wasn't the vote or the crowd, though. It was the moment the developer insisted the proposal wasn't for a “data center” but a “transmission of information center.”
The attempted Orwellian move showed how, over the past year, the idea of a “data center” has gotten so toxic that the powers-that-be feel the need for a rebrand. From the mountains to the prairies, for MAGA and Antifa, a “data center” is the one thing Americans agree is the absolute worst.
Saying "transmission of information center," of course, won’t change the thing itself, but hearing that freshly spun phrase set me thinking:
“What actually are data centers, and why do people hate them so much?”
A rose by any other name would . . .well, what, exactly?
On a nuts-and-bolts level, a data center is a giant warehouse packed with thousands of computers. Sort of like a gigundo library, but instead of floor-to-celing books, a data center has rows and rows of screen-less, keyboard-less computers stacked on hundreds of shelves, all taking up around 240 acres on average.
These computer warehouses store nearly all the photos, emails, videos, websites, vibe-coded games, emojis, etc. that make up “the cloud,” as well as the coded instructions on how to process all of the information.
Computers outside these buildings, like the one I’m typing on and you’re reading on right now, ask the inside-the-building computers to hand over some of this remotely-stored information, and then, voila, The Internet!
Since the internet runs all the time, the data center computers run all the time, all at once, all packed closely together, and so they all get very hot. The same way your laptop gets warm on your legs, or your phone gets hot in your hand, but times a gazillion.
Because of this gazillion-times heat, a data center needs some way to keep cool. The most common way is “evaporative cooling,” where water absorbs heat and evaporates in cooling towers . This water can’t be just any old water, unfortunately. It needs to be potable water, otherwise the equipment will corrode.
Data centers can consume 1 million to 5 million gallons of water a day , roughly what a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people uses a day, to keep the servers cool, and it’s the drinkable, usable water doing the cooling, removing it from the local supply.
Bad news for humans during droughts and heat waves.
It’s worth noting that some data center operators are shifting to “air cooling,” which does cut water use BUT (womp womp) it uses more electricity . Data centers’ energy demand is already mind-boggling.
Microsoft expects its AI power demand to rise eightfold by 2030. Reuters reports that the boom has already caused shortages of critical grid equipment like transformers, with multi-year wait times driving up costs for everyone.
In Georgia, the Public Service Commission says data center use could raise the fuel charge on residential bills by as much as 11% by 2028 . Peter Hubbard, the lone Democrat commissioner, revealed that there are "nearly $1 billion in costs that data centers pay nothing towards, but families, churches, and small businesses do."
Along with the water, the electricity, and the climate problems, there's also the noise.
The cooling equipment puts out a constant low-frequency hum that drives some nearby residents batshit. The data center overlords (who often do not live nearby) point out that their data centers are technically “compliant,” but standard noise ordinances usually measure A-weighted decibels, which underweight low-frequency sounds (so says XYZ). “Compliant” and “tolerable-to-humans” are not the same things.
A data center can be legally compliant, but its low hum still penetrates walls, disrupts sleep, and causes all sorts of ambient problems.
There's also just other random things that happen in and around data centers.
Like, potentially facilitate a nasty infection: In February, the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, found a rare, sometimes drug-resistant bacterium called Cupriavidus gilardii in its reclaimed water . They say it got there by way of a Meta AI data center, which had flushed out its cooling system and sent the bacteria-laden rinse water into the city sewer.
Or, maybe, you get you booted from your home: Georgia Power said it needed a new transmission line to keep up with data center energy demand, so it acquired more than 300 parcels of land — turning to eminent domain when owners wouldn’t sell — including residential properties like Ansley Brown’s.
"To us it's theft,” Brown told CBS . “It's literally a billion dollar company stealing land from smaller people, people who can't fight back. We don't have the money to fight Georgia Power.”
So, behold, the future! Where a low level humming noise keeps you awake at all hours while you suffer from a disabling bacterial malady and play whist by candlelight with your unhoused neighbors in the shadow of a billionaire’s hermetically sealed safety village.
So What?
This obviously all sounds gross, but real estate developers, private equity firms, energy companies, and Big Tech have been doing gross stuff for decades/centuries/all-of-human-history.
So why are people freaking out about this particular gross stuff now?
I think, on a metaphysical level, it’s because data centers have become avatars for every Big Tech incursion into our daily lives, and every way in which the Elon Musks of the world get everything while the rest of us get pollution, noise, data breaches, underfunded schools, no healthcare, and overblown subscription fees for basic shit.
Do you despise Microsoft Co-Pilot? Have you seen these new pervert glasses? Do you hate all the slop your boss sends you? Do you hate DOGE? Billionaires? Climate change? Drug ads? Politicians? Neoliberalization? Betting markets? NIL deals? Crypto scams? Utility bills? And just generally this whole pile of 21st-century American bullshit?
Well, then, friend, welcome to the data center resistance.
*
What's happening here in Marietta is happening around the country. In Nashville, they’re fighting against a data center that threatens the zoo. In Nevada, researchers estimate a dozen data centers could eventually burn through three times the electricity the Hoover Dam generates, so people are organizing to fight back. And in New York, they've just said “no more .”
It’s not just your regular ol’ haters hatin’, either.
It’s everyone.
A recent Gallup Poll found seven in ten Americans said they oppose data centers near their homes, more than oppose nuclear power plants.
These seven in ten include: Amy Kremer, co-founder of "Women for Trump," who is organizing nationwide protests against AI data centers across 22 states for this Saturday.
Also Tom Tiffany: A Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate who is airing an ad in which he stands next to a cow and pledges to "stop big data from bulldozing our farmland."
And over three-fourths of the voters in Texas who say they're worried that data centers are straining local planning, water, and the grid, leading one Texas pol to say campaigning as pro-data center in your own community is "electoral malpractice."
Everybody. Hates. Data. Centers.
Now What?
Fifteen years ago, when Facebook first started to build out its data centers, they were powered mostly by coal. Greenpeace ran a campaign called "Unfriend Coal,” mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people around the world to pressure Facebook to change. Facebook responded, promising to prioritize clean energy.
Greenpeace then put pressure on Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and one by one the companies promised to run on more wind and solar, so much so that the tech giants became the biggest buyers of clean energy on the planet.
Now, of course, the heads of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have cosied up to Trump, and OpenAI and Anthropic have joined the oligarchs. Their data centers are multiplying so fast that no amount of wind and solar could keep up, even if it was prioritized. Which it isn’t.
Google has made each of their buildings cleaner, but they now use way more power overall, because they’ve built so many more buildings. Power companies are keeping old coal plants running longer just to try to keep up with the new energy needs.
The harm has moved closer, too.
The Greenpeace campaigns asked people to care about dirty energy pollution that was often far away, but now Big Tech and Dirty Energy have brought the problems into everyone’s backyard. Data centers arrive, your electric bill goes up, your water runs out, the hum comes through the wall, and orange smoke fills your sky.
So I have my doubts “information transmission center” is going to cut it. The problems are bigger, getting worse, and the people in power are waffling. Big Tech still has a LOT of money, and politicians need it. Our job is to make it clear they need our consent more than they need Big Tech money.
Luckily, grassroots organizations have been doing a great job putting the pressure on decision-makers. But they need help.
Here’s how:
Find a data center project near you .
Get in touch with the Climate Resistance Incubator.
Follow Instrumental for more daily Data Center news updates.
*NB: All typos are because I’ve been driven batshit by ambient low humming cooling tower bacteria
