Comment on When it comes to total water use, AI data centers are a drop in the bucket

• Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Amazon provides their own numbers, and the rest is reported. The hed is not Amazon’s. It’s called sourcing.

  Look, I’m not a fan of “AI,” but I do care about the quality of reporting, and Kyle is solid. I know it’s en vogue to immediately bash anything that’s not flaming vitriol, but learn some media literacy instead of just having a knee-jerk reaction because Amazon is a source. That’s going to happen when covering Amazon. Where else do you expect to get those data?

  Let’s say this is total horseshit, which it may well be. Do the other figures provided still tell the same story assuming Amazon is understating water use by an order of magnitude? Yep. If all you care about is water use, railing against golf courses and calling for an end to lawn watering is going to be more effective.

  If all you care about is AMAZON BAD, then your response makes sense.

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  • TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Environmentalists have been decrying the levels of water use at golf courses and on traditional lawns for literally decades. If you take the self-reported figures from the behemoth tech companies and compare it to the worst industrial wastes of clean drinking water or to entire nations worth of water usage, the tech companies seem small. That doesnt make their impact any less significant, but it does make this a greenwashing rag.

    Media literacy isnt about having a curated list of trusted sources that you take as gospel, it’s about critically reading, understanding, and questioning the content before determining meaning and impact.

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    • Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I chortle at your attempt to teach a two-decade newspaper editor “media literacy.” I’m fine with – and agree with – your point through “less significant” … but you aren’t backing up your “greenwashing rag” conclusion. It appears to be pure opinion, not analysis.

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  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If all you care about is AMAZON BAD, then your response makes sense.

    No, my response makes sense because it’s literally, “we’ve investigated ourselves and have found no wrongdoing”.

    You are taking PR from the largest corporation on the planet about the environmental impact of their own data centers. Surely you’re not that stupid.

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