> don’t “freedom of information” laws mostly apply to government agencies?

As others (including TFA) have noted, this is false because there's an EU directive requiring "private companies" to disclose this.

In any case, the "it's a private company" defense is as tired now as it was when it was about blocking people from social media, or debanking etc. Just because the legal system hasn't yet caught up to regulating companies in a certain way, doesn't mean that it's not in everyone's best interest (except perhaps the owners of the companies in question) to have such regulation.

> I personally believe at the very least the water usage is heavily overblown compared to the agriculture industry.

The important distinction being that agriculture provides food, while data centers provide AI slop and advertising.