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Comment by goatlover | Hacker News Reader

Data centers aren't housing and don't always make use of renewable energy. Seems kind of crazy to me that people shouldnt' have a say in what gets built near them. There are certainly things I wouldn't want to live near to, data centers being one of them.

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I'm really not sure how I can be clearer about the fact that I don't agree with the prevailing sentiment on these threads about data centers† but that my reason for commenting here is that public comment processes are a nightmare for democratic policymaking.

† (I think they're fine and moreover I think they're a huge missed opportunity for blue states to get more sustainable and regulated power delivered and data centers running under those regulations, rather that what's going to happen, which is data centers all being located in red states that aren't going to regulate them at all).

> what's going to happen, which is data centers all being located in red states that aren't going to regulate them at all

The data center backlash is bipartisan though? Even Texas froze all data center buildouts recently [1].

[1]: https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/texas-data-center-pr...

Texas is a weird case because they're the fastest growing state in the country and they run their own independent power grid --- badly (see: the winter outage a couple years back). And even then: data centers are going to get built in Texas. Gov. Abbott is doing a performative audit thing, but they're ultimately going to clear projects.

Did you not use public comments to help stop flock in your community? Why is that different?

No, I did not! I've written at length about how I engaged with my local municipality on Flock cameras. The search bar will avail. None of it involved public comment.

> but that my reason for commenting here is that public comment processes are a nightmare for democratic policymaking.

The public comment process has stopped a lot, a LOT, of shitty things from happening at the federal and state government level. I've seen it happen time and time again, because I've been part of it time and time again. Over decades.

So I see this, and to be honest? I'm going to move on! Because this clashes with a lot of extremely personal experiences to me that have shaped public policy and legislation in positive ways. Sometimes people will get it wrong and it can be corrupted by Big Money like anything else, but it's one of the few levers the public has until they start moving to the different boxes of Democracy.

Mostly it's stopped the construction of housing.

> Seems kind of crazy to me that people shouldnt' have a say in what gets built near them.

People get really irrational about things built near them and their say causes problems finding anywhere to build reasonable things.

> There are certainly things I wouldn't want to live near to, data centers being one of them.

Give it a residential noise limit and I'm happy to live near a data center. (I am worried about power prices but that's a matter of total number rather than specific location, and utilities charging them enough to cover expansion.)

Given the scale of the buildout, I think it would be sensible to mandate that, for every data center built, the companies doing that must also subsidize a new green power plant somewhere (not necessarily the same region, but where it makes the most sense), proportionally to consumption. Basically each kWh of power has to be compensated. No gas or any other fossil fuels even if there's pre-existing supply.

Separately there's a problem with the lack of enforcement, most notoriously Musk's infamous gas-powered data center that apparently violates a bunch of regulations including noise. Musk does this because he believes that he can get away with it in a sense that the eventual fines, if any, will be dwarfed by the profit extracted. The penalties need to be hefty enough that this computation doesn't work out.

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