{
  "id": 17716943,
  "title": "America on Data Centers: 10k city council comments",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/02/america-on-data-centers-10k-city-council-comments",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-02T00:17:33.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Hacker News",
    "slug": "hacker-news",
    "url": "https://www.americansentiment.com/datacenters"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "America's cities are flooded with comments about data centers, with over 10,000 recorded in 2026. At 417 local governments, these meetings have revealed a feverish opposition to the construction of data centers. Even when supporters are considered, they still outnumber the opponents 6 to 1. Accusations of corruption are often made but are mostly untrue. Many attendees expressed skepticism about the promised benefits of data centers.\n\nAI labs were mentioned by commenters, with some identifying themselves by name or the name of their founder. The sentiment varied, with chatbot-related comments appearing in a lighter shade. Notably, the number of comments mentioning AI was surprisingly low. Counties were grouped according to their 2024 presidential vote, with heavily Republican counties focusing on land and community character, while heavily Democratic ones discussed climate change and fairness to poorer areas.\n\nThe disparity in concerns raised by different counties was significant. For instance, rural commenters often spoke about community character, farmland, and property rights, while urban and suburban attendees raised issues like transparency, government distrust, air pollution, and utility bills. Union support was present in 43 governments.\n\nThe data comes from Prophecy Gov's internal records of 300,000+ local government council meetings. All 10,202 comments are on record. A selection of these comments are available for viewers to watch.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}