Discussion

How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres’ environmental toll

_ache_: A french article on the same subject, but paywalled.https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2026/04/17/comm...

jimnotgym: I have complete confidence the EU will realise this may violate transparency laws, it will go to court in 7-8 years, publish a response in the next 5 finally getting this law fixed in about 2040. They always get these things right, in the end

johndunne: I find this facet of Capitalism the most concerning; fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder. It breaks the link between people and matters that concern society (like the environment, in the case of this article). In the drive to increase profit, individual legislators can be convinced to tweak a law or two for 'greater economic growth' somewhere. Over the decades, the effect is a shift in political power away from the people and into industry and ultimately into the hands of a few. I've come to think that this is what we're witnessing in the US. While we're not looking, the landscape is changing behind the scenes. Bram Vranken's quote from the article is poignant: 'Who does the Commission really represent: Big Tech or the public interest?' I often wonder what can be done by us (i.e. all people) to push back and it mostly requires a lot of effort from everyone; participation in Democracy.

direwolf20: This isn't solely due to shareholder fiduciary duty. Even without such a duty, the shareholders would fire anyone who doesn't put them first. Even without shares, a sole owner of a company would also do that. No matter your position, you don't get to do things that are bad for your boss, so the ultimate bosses (whoever they are in a given system) hold all the power.And power has a tendency to accumulate. Powerful people always use their power to increase their power. There are no exceptions.

nDRDY: I wonder if this is less about the environmental impact (which can be greenwashed as necessary), and more about the power consumption of individual data centres.

stingraycharles: That’s the opposite of what we’re looking for here.

stingraycharles: > I find this facet of Capitalism the most concerning; fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder.That’s not the least of my concerns. My problem with capitalism is its desire to influence politics in its favor, and the utter lack of regulation amongst politicians (ie self regulation) to forbid this practice.The whole industry of lobbying should not be allowed to exist.

lwhi: I imagine they want to ensure that the consumption can't be used to reverse engineer technical information relating to each specific centre.

tgv: That's an Ayn Rand type black and white view of society. Not so long ago, companies were supposed to (and many did) care for continuity, in a broad sense: survival, labor, customer, and product. Nowadays, you would add environment too. Shares were a way of getting more interest than a savings account. Heck, there were even cooperations in which the laborers were shareholders as well.The word you are looking for is greed.

wongarsu: Fiduciary duty effectively turns profit maximization into the only valid goal. Companies with sole owners or family businesses tend to have much more diverse goals. Many of Europe's large companies are still private (certainly more so than in the US), and from the ones I've personally dealt with the image of the founder/owner/family is often a driving concern. That can materialize as better business practices, or as a ruthless business that reinvests a notable part of profits in projects with public benefit, usually locally wherever they are headquartered.Other examples in the US would include SpaceX, which supposedly is not about profit but about building a mars colony (and so far their actions seem to align with that), or Rupert Murdoch's media empire that's at least as much about spreading right wing views in the anglosphere as it is about money.

thfuran: Lobbying must be allowed to exist. You bringing issues to the attention of your representative or asking them to change some policy is lobbying. It is even very useful to allow organizations to lobby politicians. For example, I want EFF to be able to lobby politicians about things I don't have the time or influence to really push for political change on. I do wonder how we could effectively restrict corporate lobbying in that context. Maybe there could be a special type of charitable nonprofit that is more restricted, such as only being allowed to accept funding from individuals rather than corporations and then deny lobbying rights to anyone acting as agent of any organization other than one of that sort? But I think we're very far from a political environment in the US in which any constitutional amendment restricting personal rights in the political process would end well.

blitzar: I forget, am i meant to be shaking with rage that the EU have regulations OR that the regulations include disclosure carveouts?

TeMPOraL: You're supposed to go blind with rage after "the EU".