But datcenters have been around for decades now. That's what makes it so insane.

Around me people are rioting about the construction approval of a new DC, it has all the insane FUD on social media flying around about it.

...and yet there are already 24 datacenters in the area, with the oldest ones running since the early '00s

Suspicion and making up claims are separate ideas. You can be suspicious without polluting the internet with junk information.

Understandable and justified are very different. I worry that unprincipled skepticism of big corporate makes it harder to stop the bad stuff; if every large project becomes a battle of corporate power vs. slopulist criticism, how do you sort through that to focus on the truly bad ones?

It seems pretty easy to undermine the trust in the other side if you just pretend to be on it and inflate their numbers. See: Florida will be underwater by date X [in the past]