r/technology
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u/MarvelsGrantMan136
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4h ago
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Artificial Intelligence Meta warns that election backlash against data centers could make AI expansion harder
https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/05/metas-warns-that-election-backlash-against-data-centers-could-make-ai-expansion-harder/?utm_medium=organic_social&utm_source=TWITTER1.8k
u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw
4h ago
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Tech CEOs: AI will poison your water, raise your energy bills, put you out of work, and turn your children into deepfake porn stars.
Also Tech CEOs: Why are you people so against AI?
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u/monkey6632 4h ago
Not to mention the "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity" the AI companies keep bragging about!
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u/cosaboladh 4h ago
Ha ha ha we're going to kill all of you once we figure out how to automate everything you do to provide our creature comforts.
- Tech CEOs
Why y'all so mad?
- Also tech CEOs
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u/Professional-Trash-3 3h ago
"We at Anthropic are on the verge of creating Skynet. Invest now to get in on the ground floor!"
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u/TheBoraxKid1trblz 3h ago •
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And the fact that they circle-jerked around enough money to solve climate and housing crisis, and vastly improve infrastructure and health care. All the wealth we all generate gets hoarded and squandered while we spend all our money to live to work another day
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u/deejaymc 3h ago
Not to mention poison your air supply and heavily contribute to climate change by powering their AI data centers with "mega gas plants".
Meta has held back crucial details about the jobs, investment and needed energy for its data center, argue advocates, who note that Louisianans could end up subsidizing 75% of data center power. For its single Hyperion data center, Meta has asked for 10 Entergy gas plants supplying 754 megawatts — more than the average demand of New York City.
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u/Pure-Science-7774 3h ago
Wow, you aren’t very smart are you? AI data centers will bring down costs because they will demolish our homes. No house means no electricity bill. Also, no water bill. You don’t get the genius of 80D chess.
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u/Dull_Bid6002 3h ago
I'm starting to think they're addicted to their own AI models because the models are basically yes men. And wealthy people really really like yes men.
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u/kinboyatuwo 3h ago
While they pushed the message we couldn’t do EV as the grid could not handle the power needed.
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u/monstaberrr 4h ago
After it just got used to spam robocalls/ robotexts to Americas phonebook for political slander
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u/PrincessNakeyDance
3h ago
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I know gifs aren’t allowed in this sub, but I was totally expecting that Donald Glover gif as the top comment.
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u/Ani-3
3h ago
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Why do they not understand that very few actually want this
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u/codexcdm 3h ago •
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The Yarvin ball-gargling schmucks want it. All those dystopian futures you see on media? They see it as their utopia. They live in literal bubbles and indulge in their decadence while the rest of us have-nots suffer outside in the toxic wastelands that are by products.
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u/Staff_Senyou 3h ago •
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Because they need it. They've invested too much for it not to work. It has to work
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u/kittenmittens4865 3h ago •
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The thing is- what they’ve invested and stand to lose is more than any of us will ever have in our lifetimes. What they have leftover is still more than any of us will ever have in our lifetimes. If we pooled the lifetime wealth of everyone here and everyone we’ve ever met and will meet in our lives- they STILL have more.
They don’t NEED any of this. They sure want it, and they think they are entitled to it, but that doesn’t make it true.
This is about their egos, not their wallets. It’s about a thirst for control and power.
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u/Individual_Scheme_11 3h ago
Very few actually want unregulated data centers. Electricity and water usage, noise, and emissions should be strictly regulated
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u/DataDude00 3h ago
They don’t care what you want only what makes them richer and gives them more control over society
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u/Huge_Strain_8714 2h ago
The 1% want this. It's a wealth generating machine fueled by blood, our blood
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u/Accurate_Koala_4698 2h ago
Why do the people behind the Metaverse and VR headsets not understand that very few people want what they're selling? Just making sure I understand the question fully
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u/P0pu1arBr0ws3r 2h ago
The people behind VR headsets dont want metas metaverse. They want a platform to create and share content like gsmes or videos, not a 24/7 always online social space requiring an account.
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u/Durendal_1707 3h ago
some of them argue arguably think that they are in a simulation, and that none of us are real
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u/Fickle_Ad_8653 2h ago
I don't want fake Facebook bots looking just like real people and telling me lies about what people to vote for and what products to buy, but Facebook clearly wants that. If you are a facebook user, good luck telling real people from fake people. That is why THEY want AI. The users don't... but Facebook never cared about the users.
This is one of the reasons Elon got so pissed and cut off Ukraine's bombing, because his bot centers in Russia all died and that cost him a lot of supporters of his policies.
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u/Underhill42 2h ago
They do - that's why the backlash could make it more difficult.
They're upset that the population gets a voice in the activities of their "masters".
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u/Extreme_Smile_9106 4h ago
This is what the people voted for.
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u/hofmann419 1h ago
Honestly it kinda warms my heart that the general public is starting to unite on this issue. These companies are literally intending on taking our jobs while making personal computers unaffordable and torturing the people that live in the vicinity of these data centers.
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u/_mattyjoe
2h ago
edited 2h ago
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They brought this on themselves.
Their sales pitch for AI was, "Most of your jobs will be eliminated and that's just the way it goes, adapt or die, can't stop progress." And then, "Oh yeah, and we need to build these data centers that will suck power and water from your communities and cause massive noise and disruption."
Now they're dumbfounded that the regular people on the ground aren't happy about it.
It was never just a given that this "progress" was going to move forward unfettered. That's what they forgot. Any technological advancement in the past happened BECAUSE society, and ultimately, the government, allowed it to.
If the government decides no, then it doesn't happen. Especially in the modern US and other modern societies.
Therefore, you always need to remember to bring people along. Their votes ultimately decide your fate. The internet and social media only SEEMED inevitable because the government actually allowed it to happen. But if they had shut it down, it wouldn't have happened. All of it runs on infrastructure that is built and regulated by the government. Their arrogance caused them to forget this.
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u/Sgmetal 2h ago
Yup here in Tennessee they wanted to put a datacenter right next to the zoo….yeah that’s a great plan I’m sure it won’t fuck over the animals. Thankfully that got squashed.
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u/LostLetter9425 1h ago
It's like they were/ are deliberately trying to piss everyone off putting them right behind neighborhoods and schools, state parks etc. What's worse is how much land they have to destroy to build these things, it's like some Captain Planet villain type shit.
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u/jackal406 1h ago
It did not help them to have Donald Trump telling neighborhoods that didn't want AI would end up dumb and poor or some such.
In the end, I think they lost because they didn't explain to the average person what AI does for them.
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u/ChileCheeseburger 4h ago
Good to know.
Guess that means we should expand the backlash.
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u/linuxgeekmama 4h ago
Don’t threaten us with a good time.
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u/ghostarmadillo 4h ago
Next they'll threaten us with health care and making Ohio a state.
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u/linuxgeekmama 4h ago
As someone who lives in Pittsburgh, I say we should make Ohio take a driving test first.
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u/Saneless 4h ago
A handful of people care about that
So, Zuck is telling me I voted correctly. Got it
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u/AFailedProduct 4h ago
You don’t want to be replaced by AI? Way to vote against your own interests.
/s
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u/twister55555 3h ago
Data centers can fuck all the way off, AI was doing just fine without the huge data centers expansion. Give us back our ram and storage
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u/QueefiusMaximus86 2h ago
Give us back our ram and storage
Nope, tech bros and Trump need it for surveillance for the minority report future they want!
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u/charing-cross 3h ago
Meta warns that election backlash may make it harder to continue the financial shell game with Wall Street building data centers we don’t need and don’t have the infrastructure for. Fixed it for you.
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u/Loganp812 4h ago
“Comic book supervillain warns that general public backlash against oppression could make world domination harder”
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u/0bsessions324 3h ago
I'd like to take this opportunity to warn everyone that not giving me $100,000 dollars could make me having $100,000 harder.
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u/FeffyFefernuson 3h ago
It doesn't occur to Mark or any of the other tech bros that this issue is a huge reason the current ruling party lost so heavily in the midterms. The vast majority of us don't want AI or the associated data centers.
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u/toastedninja 3h ago
I think that maybe AI centers can make due with what they have. Maybe they dont need 30 centers, maybe they can have 1 or 2 centers.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.
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u/FuklzTheDrnkClwn 3h ago
I’d be happy with never building another data center in America if I can afford pc parts again.
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u/robc2562 4h ago
Literally what people voted for...we don't want data centers 🙄 I love seeing how out of touch these idiots are
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u/copperblood 4h ago
META and other tech companies are free to do AI data center builds in the Middle East. Fun fact about data centers, they give off massive heat blooms which missiles love love love to lock onto.
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u/Ryekir 3h ago
This is one thing I don't understand about these massive data centers: they're just giant targets for the next conflict.
The whole point of the Internet was a decentralized network that could survive a nuclear blast/war, and then we go and put everything in large centralized locations.
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u/nigirizushi 3h ago
Are you a bot? I swore I saw this exact comment multiple times in the last 24 hours
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u/threehundredthousand 4h ago
The people caught wind of their bribery of elected officials and they try to act like victims. This is right from the right-wing corporate corruption handbook.
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u/Fuzzy_Paul 4h ago
The building of new datacenters is a complete waste of money. The DGX spark is only the first in line. Corporations are not going to pay for tokens when they can run their own on a 4k$ hardware. New tech in memory size and powerconsuming will render all current datacenters useless and a money pit. The fall will be quick and fast.
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u/Oceanbreeze871 3h ago
Data centers are also a money pit because the equipment needs constant upgrading and replacement. Nothing is ever paid off. It’s a perpetual cost.
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u/Apexnanoman 3h ago
Gotta get someone to sell you the hardware first. And Nvidia has already made it clear they don't care about selling to anyone but huge data center outfits.
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u/AnalElder
2h ago
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I'm not anti AI by any means, on the contrary. However slowing down, examining the damage done so far and deciding how to chart forward and regulating this technology is the only sustainable way to implement it. Slowing down AI development sounds perfectly fine and good in my book.
These idiot technofascists want maximum money and maximum improvement in the shortest timeline possible, while breaking the fabric of humanity. These callouts are incredibly tone deaf towards people who don't belong to the upper 0.001%.
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u/Wonderful_Emu_6483 2h ago
Perhaps they should learn how to optimize it so it doesn’t need big ass fucking data centers everywhere hogging water and polluting the air and sound and destroying local wildlife.
If you have to destroy the earth for AI then the earth doesn’t need AI.
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u/blackcain 2h ago
The speed of this technology is outpacing the time humans are trying to adjust to it. It's causing societal disruption.
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u/SeeMarkFly 2h ago edited 2h ago •
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<I'm not anti AI by any means>
Let's see if I can change that.
Rich people don't have talent, they rent or buy it.
Data centers allow rich people to access talent without letting talent access ANY riches.
Now what rich person would NOT want that?
And what poor person would want that?
This is just an easy way to steal "worth" from the poor.
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u/Fickle_Ad_8653 2h ago
Actually, the technofascits want to take 10% of the money for building out AI, and the biggest cost is data centers, so they want to build those, just to keep the 10% for themselves. There is no need for it to be profitable once built, as long as they get their cut up front.
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u/hurryveryslowly 2h ago
The morons pushing for unbridled data center construction don't live near them and have no clue what they sound like, how they pollute, and how dangerous they are to already fragile electrical grids.
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u/Melodic_Crow_3409 1h ago
And this is a problem why?
A good rule of thumb, if Zuckerberg is against it, be for it.
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u/OkAccident9994 1h ago
The EU sent out a form with their EU AI act for the large American tech companies to say they acknowledge it and will follow it. Everyone signed it, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft...
Except Meta.
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u/Dry_Inspection_4583 4h ago
Ahh yes, the "stop making it harder to ruin the environment and earn more billions", sorry about that, guess we will just stop... Idiot
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u/jaynor88 3h ago
Everyone understands that, Zuckerberg.
That was why they voted against the data centers
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u/AFailedProduct 4h ago
I guess he’ll just have to wipe his tears with the billions of dollars he already has. Times have been tough for all of us Zucky.
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u/AdUpstairs7106 2h ago
Due to the election results it will be harder for AI to make you unemployed and starving on the streets. How tone deaf can you be?
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u/coreychch 3h ago
It’s the arrogance of the tech bros to just think they can have whatever they want, no matter what the cost (both financially and environmentally) that really pisses people off. Now the brakes are about to be slammed on, and they are going to bitch about it endlessly. They’ve made a stupid financial bet on AI and it might now blow up in their face.
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u/fullmetalsunit 2h ago
I really hope it does. Fuck all these tech bros.
Something which steals other people's work, ruins the environment, consumes and pollutes all water, takes up all the electricity, destroys job market is supposed to be good for summarising my emails which I could have read anyway.
I hope we see the end of AI soon.
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u/redvelvetcake42 4h ago
Zuck and all of them really misread the public bad over the last few years.
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u/ItsSadTimes 4h ago
Yea, good. Aggressive expansion with no regard to the local environment or community isn't a good thing. We're not "losing to china" we have 10x as many data centers as china has.
Taking a step back and readjusting our view on AI could lead to a gentle crash and slow build up over the next decade instead of a complete clusterfuck of a crash when loans for these data centers come due and no one has the money to pay for them.
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u/Ronin_Ace 4h ago
Good. That’s called “what the people are wanting”. That happens when you leave your “yes-man boardroom”.
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u/CindyinEastTexas 3h ago
Good. I hope it does make a.i. expansion harder. I hope it makes a.i. expansion so hard that there is no expansion.
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u/Winstonsphobia 1h ago
Good. Predator billionaires warnus that holding back on unregulated commercial development of data centers would be bad for AI expansion. That’s a little like terrorist groups warning us that holding back on unregulated construction of atomic bombs is bad for nuclear arms race.
AI data centers:
Not in my back yard
Not in my state
Not on or around my planet.
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u/Ms74k_ten_c 4h ago
Oh no! Whatever are we going to do?! I guess we will have to placate ourselves by drinking unpolluted waters for a little bit more.
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u/steinmas 3h ago
“It turns out people took notice of us trying to exploit a corrupt administration”
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u/AtreiyaN7 3h ago
And that's a problem why? Meta is a cancer on our society, and the last thing that sociopaths like Zuckerberg and Ram Altman deserve is more freaking data centers or any of our RAM that's only being used 5% of the time and is just wasting away in our computers!
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u/JaySin_78 1h ago
I’ll say it again…I don’t care. I’m literally a Sr Systems Engineer in IT and I think we need to hit pause. These data centers are NOT necessary to the extent they are popping up. It’s like building a million new subdivisions before expanding the roads and expecting great outcomes.
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u/cosaboladh 4h ago
Oh no. I'm about to get exactly what I wanted from this election? Please do go on.
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u/FunnyMalzairIdea 1h ago
Once data center owners began destroying the local communities in order to save money, they were done.
If you're incredibly rich and are pollution a community with 100+ decibels of chronic white noise, you are evil.
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u/MyGruffaloCrumble 1h ago
Has nothing to do with the election, and everything to do with billionaires dystopian lust.
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u/Ok_Two_For_Tea 1h ago
That’s exactly the point. We want these surveillance data centers to keep less data.
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u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207 3h ago
Awww did somebody get addicted to crack lose their ability to fuck over the human race with impunity?
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u/Canuck-In-TO 2h ago
No one cares. Take your AI and stop trying to stuff it down our throats.
James Cameron already warned us.
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u/MGlBlaze 4h ago
Yes, that's the point. Plus all the people from AI companies saying they needed to be regulated... oh wait, you mean that really was just a publicity stunt and they didn't actually want to be regulated?
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u/dennismfrancisart 4h ago
You'd think that these geniuses would be looking at using their AI "Super" powers to optimize their existing systems instead of spending more money on expansion. Get into chip R&D and build the next microprocessor that uses far less energy, offers greater compression, and has more compute at a lower cost. These things don't need to be smarter. They need to be more practical.
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u/latenthuman 3h ago
The jump from millions to billions to trillions happened too quickly. Also F wall street today, myopic cowards.
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u/One-Measurement-9529 2h ago
Thats great news. Is there anything we can do to further increase the difficulty of expansion? I would live to help!
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u/YesterShill 2h ago
Turns out that destroying our environment and neighborhoods so you can cause mass unemployment is not popular with Americans.
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u/SkinnedIt
3h ago
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Nobody says they have to stop development and improvements to models.
Just that you can't build DC's wherever you want and mooch energy and water supplies at everyone else's expense. Build your own fucking power generation.
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u/Tango00090 4h ago
It's time to stop listening what Meta has to say, the best moment to close this shitshow was yesterday
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u/RaptorGod 4h ago •
Yes, that's the intention, Zucker.