Meta is spending millions to convince people that data centers are cool and you like them

Over the past fewer months of 2025, Meta spent $6.4 cardinal connected an advertisement run moving successful cities crossed the country, from Sacramento to Washington, pinch a clear mission: triumph complete viewers connected the building of caller information centers. As the New York Times reports, the advertisement run is anchored by short, folksy video spotlights connected Meta’s information centers successful Altoona, Iowa, and Los Lunas, New Mexico.

The ads make the lawsuit that Meta’s information centers create jobs, revitalizing agrarian communities.

However, they return a reasonably idealistic tone. For instance, the Altoona advertisement portrays a municipality connected the brink of disappearing, but acknowledgment to Meta’s information center, its residents get to meet up astatine section diners and be shot games. The Los Lunas advertisement likewise shows information halfway labor having cookouts pinch their families, alternatively than moving distant to find work.

And Meta isn’t the only institution trying to person the nationalist to clasp the information halfway boom. The Financial Times reported this week that information halfway operators, including Digital Reality, QTS, and NTT Data, are readying a “lobbying blitz” to run successful defense of caller information centers successful consequence to nationalist backlash.

However, the recent wintertime storm that swept the state only highlighted the strain the powerfulness grid is already under, including areas astir ample information centers.

For Meta, and competitors for illustration Microsoft and Google, these sprawling information centers are captious for powering AI, but nationalist sentiment connected them has been souring. Many communities are pushing backmost against the building of caller information centers, agreed crossed the governmental disagreement by concerns astir skyrocketing power costs and h2o use. These movements person caused delays and cancellations for billions of dollars’ worthy of information halfway investments crossed the nation, for illustration now-canceled buildouts successful Oregon, Arizona, Missouri, Indiana, and Virginia.