Facebook’s data center plans rile residents in the Netherlands
When Susan Schaap, 61, travels from her Dutch hometown of Zeewolde to the nearest city of Leylystad, the 30-minute drive takes her through vast tulip fields, interrupted only by wind turbines and sometimes sheep. But if Facebook parent company Meta's plans are approved, her view would be replaced by the Netherlands' largest-ever data center.
Meta's data center is "too big for a small town like Zeewolde," says Schaap, who has become one of the project's most vocal opponents. "There are 200 data centers in the Netherlands already," she argues, and the move would give huge swathes of farmland to just one company, "which is not fair."
Like Schaap, other residents of Zeewolde are outraged that Meta has chosen their town for its first gigantic data center in the Netherlands. They claim the company will be allowed to syphon off a large percentage of the country's renewable energy supply to power porn, conspiracy theories, and likes on Meta's social platforms. Their attitude reflects a wider shift against Big Tech's plans to flock to the Netherlands, one of three key hubs for data centers in Europe alongside the UK and Germany, turning the issue into a national debate ahead of local elections later this year.
