I got a text the other day from an unknown number pretending to be some long lost friend. Usually I just ignore these texts. Sometimes I block them. The other night I interacted. Calling me Mia, they claimed to be Li Xiu and wondered if I’d forgotten them. I responded with “who is this,” apparently not having really read the text. They sent a pic of a pretty Asian woman. I responded, “OMG that one night!!!” Then they sent a three texts in a row of variations of having sent this to the wrong number that reeked of AI. So I asked if they were AI or being sex slaved. The conversation devolved from there until they claimed they were beating the supposed young woman and had killed her and it was my fault.
It’s possible it was not AI, but it was obviously a scam of some sort. While whomever was behind the scam was probably looking for personal information which is widely available from Facebook and Google and hackers, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the internet - specifically the data stored in servers we call the internet - is BS, scams or spam or ads. According to Veritas Technologies, 52% of all data stored worldwide is unused or underutilized called “dark data” because those responsible for managing it don’t have any idea about its content or value. Of course, “stored” means in data centers that use a lot of fresh water and a lot of energy.
Facebook and Google and Uber and numerous other tech companies have chosen to put a large number of their data centers in water-stressed states because of the plentiful (and cheap) solar and wind energy, which makes their carbon footprint look better. Fun fact: A large data center can gobble up anywhere between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day — as much as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.1 Of course those clean energy states don’t have enough water for the people and industries already there. But, energy in the water rich east is often dirty and expensive. Meanwhile, dark data wastes up to 6.4 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.
(Not to mention ewaste. The lifespan of a data center is 15-20 years, and technology is ever evolving sending over 50 million metric tons of ewaste to landfills every year. E-waste accounts for nearly 70% of the toxic heavy metals in landfills, and these chemicals, such as mercury, cadmium, beryllium, and lead, can contaminate the soil, waterways, and air, leading to polluted environments and negatively impacting human and marine life.)
Facebook claims bajillions of users for their advertisers and Meta investors. And it probably still has many. But since they won’t let you close an account without a death certificate and everyone born after 1985 has at least 3 dead accounts, how much of their data centers are spending coal produced energy and precious western water to host dead accounts? And then I think about how much junk and spam email I get. Where are the data centers that store these scam texts and spam emails? Do we suppose the creators of screwfix and boostaro and life line screener and whoever Ted Travis is are using environmentally friendly servers to host their solutions to my [and millions of others] supposed problems?
Thirty one and a half percent of spam originates in Russia, but America has 10 times the number of data centers than the next closest county (Germany). (Russia only has 297 data centers to America’s 5381 as of March 2024.) And since only 29% of the world uses clean energy, odds are good wherever these scammer and spammer data centers are, many are using dirty energy.
Even if we concede that we like Facebook and Google (and Substack) and the internet at large, nearly every webpage and sm platform hosts ads. Do we suppose those fat shaming weight loss ads are stored in environmentally sustainable data centers? How much energy and fresh water is being use to store pictures and filters that make teens suicidal? We’re going to die from natural disasters and famine and lack of water feeling like we could have lost more weight.
I’d like to think that people who are looking for an easy way to gain millions of dollars with no ethics care about the energy produced to keep their scams running and the water used to cool the servers that host their scams. But they might not.
There are solutions of course. The EPA recently passed a much watered down rule that would require power plants to capture 90% of their CO2 emissions by 2040 (except gas fired plants). But the Inflation Reduction Act provides loads of money for household to switch to efficient electric heating and cars which will increase our use of electricity. This is good, as electricity is cleaner than gas, but we’ll need a lot more. And many places are not in a hurry to replace coal and gas power plants with clean energy production. Add to that, Republicans are pushing to eliminate tax incentive for clean energy conversion and have passed laws at the state level forbidding retiring coal plants and baring climate analyses for new power plants.2
But
What if Congress passed legislation (lol I know, but let’s pretend) requiring all data centers in America to run on clean energy and be in places with plentiful water. Or taxed the hell out of data centers that use more than their fair share of water and electricity. A Google data center in The Dalles, OR uses over a quarter of the city’s water, while only providing 1.25% of the jobs and 6.2% of taxes. QTS Realty in Aurora, CO is building a “hyperscale center” with a 160 MW load “projected to potentially escalate up to 252 MW,” according to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Currently, the entire town of Aurora uses 938 kWh per month. (1 MWh is equivalent to 1,000 kWh.)
Of course that would just push data centers to 3rd world countries. So, in that same bill, congress could require companies that use data centers outside of the US to ensure those data centers use clean energy and exist where there is abundant water. Or perhaps if they chose dirty thirsty data centers in poor countries, we just add a huge climate tax that goes to helping settle refugees in the US. Either way, Google and Facebook and Uber all the other big internet companies might put their lobbying weight and money behind clean energy.
Or what if Congress passed a tax based on what kind of data data centers held. Junk and spam and scams and dark data could be taxed at a super high rate. Old personal data, anything over a few years could be taxed too. Then they would be incentivized to cull their data holdings. This would help with the right to be forgotten and if they passed those taxes on to us, like good greedy companies do, we could erase our own data.
This of course might put a serious dent in the internet. Don’t get me wrong. I like the internet. I like having a place to write and publish. I like being able to look up nearly any question I come up with. It’s nice to have maps and directions easily accessible, and to see pics of family. And, I like texting. But is it necessary for all that data to be kept forever? Was the library at Alexandria full of descriptions of people’s dinners, and drawings of cats doing silly things, and harassing letters, and porn? Or was it perhaps curated.
Between crypto and “the cloud,” the internet is our new most wasteful polluting industry, and so much of it is crap. Actual unwanted spam and scams, not to mention harmful content. Perhaps putting our livability, our environment, our climate first we might also save ourselves from our cultural trash.
Legal Tangent Question
I am not a lawyer, though I sometime think about going to law school just to learn if only it wouldn’t bankrupt me. But I wonder if there is a way around Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in data centers in a clean energy argument. First it would require laws or maybe EPA rules around clean energy use. If there are such laws, perhaps at the state level(?), then could someone who was doxxed or harassed or harmed by weightloss ads sue the data centers for storing that information on the right to a clean environment or clean water or clean air? The flaws I see are 1) if a law enforcement agency is actually going after the harasser or doxxer they would need that data as evidence, which would make suing a data center under those conditions moot. But perhaps it could apply for technically legal behavior like filters and ads and whatever it is influencers post that negatively affects children’s mental health. It also begs the question: do data centers count as “an interactive computer service.” I imagine Facebook, Google, etc.—companies that manage their infrastructure in-house would argue that their data centers ARE their platforms making them subject to Section 230. But does section 230 supersede the Clean Air or Clean Water Acts? Perhaps if Congress won’t do anything and the EPA isn’t allowed, a class action could do something. Like the kids that sued for the right to a livable environment, they could sue for a safe internet under the argument that these sm companies are polluting the air to host harmful content.
Lawyers out there: Thoughts?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/04/25/data-centers-drought-water-use/
https://www.eenews.net/articles/states-fight-to-save-coal-plants-as-epa-cracks-down/
Great article! "We’re going to die from natural disasters and famine and lack of water feeling like we could have lost more weight." Ha!
Fascinating and troubling — because I think of myself as a fairly aware and well-educated person, yet I really don't have it in my head the level of energy and water that data centers use, or that all the ads, texts, whatever that come my way actually take up crucial, three-dimensional resources. Good on you for bringing attention to the reality.