When Susan Schaap, 61, walking from his Dutch village in Zeewolde to the nearby city of Leylystad, a 30-minute walk takes him through vast fields of tulip, disturbed by wind turbines and sometimes sheep. But if the plans of the parent company Facebook Meta are approved, its mindset will be changed by the largest Netherlands site ever.
The Meta data center is “too big for a small town like Zeewolde,” says Schaap, who has been one of the project’s most vocal critics. “There is already a data center in the Netherlands 200,” he says, and the move could give a large portion of agriculture to just one company, “which is unfair.”
Like Schaap, some residents of Zeewolde are angry that Meta has chosen their town as its first data center in the Netherlands. It says the company is allowed to unleash more potential renewable force in the country to exploit pornography, conspiracy theories, and preferences on Meta social networking sites.
Their views point to a major turning point in Big Tech plans to run in the Netherlands, one of the three most important data centers in Europe along with the UK and Germany, making the issue a national issue ahead of local elections later this year.
Amsterdam has a large internet connection, which distributes traffic from nearby data centers, and has attracted high-tech officials looking to integrate better with fiber to establish giant, “hyperscale” data centers to streamline their data.
Microsoft created the first hyperscale in the Netherlands in 2015. Since then, two more have been arrested, and that number is expected to grow, according to the marketing team Dutch Data Center Association. But the Meta system on the Zeewolde page, called Tractor Field 4, is very large. It can cover 166 hectares, equivalent to more than 1,300 Olympic swimming pools, and can absorb 1,380 gigawatts per year, doubling the population of 22,000. destroyer at the same time.
The future of Tractor Field 4 has sparked protests and caused 5,000 people to sign a petition. Schaap has set up a fixed organization — Sichting DataTruc — to provide voice to local people and the council. Different groups have different concerns, but each insists that it does not conflict with the data center per se. Caroline de Roos of the biodiversity group Land von Ons stated: “We do not condone archeology. “What we are opposed to is the use of high quality agricultural land, data centers or any other industry. Just destroying agricultural land.” For Schaap, growing up was a problem. [in a recent survey] against such a quantity, because it is so big, it demands more of our electricity, it demands more water. “
Zeewolde’s argument is that the database will be taken from the village without providing additional information and information about the Meta kingdom. At the top of the Facebook Schaap page set up to challenge the plans is a painting by Ronald Oudman, depicting five buildings above Dutch villages. Each has a label that says “PORNO, FAKE NEWS, SILLY CHATS, LIKES AND COMMENTS and CONSPIRACY THEORIES.” “It has nothing to do with medical applications at hospitals or bank applications, it’s just a matter of choice but fun,” says Schaap. “We do not benefit from all of this. [Meta] deals with community programs and community outreach. But that is a joke, because they are worth less than what we give them. ”