Over the previous couple of months of 2025, Meta spent $6.4 million on an advert marketing campaign operating in cities throughout the nation, from Sacramento to Washington, with a transparent mission: win over viewers on the development of recent information facilities. Because the New York Instances reviews, the advert marketing campaign is anchored by brief, folksy video spotlights on Meta’s information facilities in Altoona, Iowa, and Los Lunas, New Mexico.
The adverts make the case that Meta’s information facilities create jobs, revitalizing rural communities.
Nonetheless, they take a reasonably idealistic tone. For example, the Altoona advert portrays a city getting ready to disappearing, however due to Meta’s information middle, its residents get to satisfy up at native diners and attend soccer video games. The Los Lunas advert equally exhibits information middle workers having cookouts with their households, fairly than shifting away to search out work.
And Meta isn’t the one firm attempting to persuade the general public to embrace the information middle increase. The Monetary Instances reported this week that information middle operators, together with Digital Actuality, QTS, and NTT Knowledge, are planning a “lobbying blitz” to marketing campaign in protection of recent information facilities in response to public backlash.
Nonetheless, the latest winter storm that swept the nation solely highlighted the pressure the ability grid is already underneath, together with areas round massive information facilities.
For Meta, and opponents like Microsoft and Google, these sprawling information facilities are important for powering AI, however public sentiment on them has been souring. Many communities are pushing again in opposition to the development of recent information facilities, united throughout the political divide by issues about skyrocketing power prices and water use. These actions have brought on delays and cancellations for billions of {dollars}’ value of knowledge middle investments throughout the nation, like now-canceled buildouts in Oregon, Arizona, Missouri, Indiana, and Virginia.
