Stop Bad Data Centers: Building a Network Against Harmful AI Infrastructure
A people-powered network connecting leaders, experts, and local advocates to fight harmful AI infrastructure
Turning Local Concerns into Collective Action
The rapid expansion of AI is driving one of the largest waves of industrial infrastructure development in decades. Across the country, communities are being asked to absorb massive new data centers that can negatively impact local energy costs, water supplies, land use, public finances, and environmental conditions. Yet many residents first learn about these projects only after key decisions are already underway.
Netcentric Campaigns launched the Stop Bad Data Centers network to close that gap. Communities facing similar challenges were often working in isolation, each trying to understand complicated technical, financial, and regulatory questions on their own. By connecting organizers, researchers, technical experts, local officials, and community leaders, the project helps people learn from one another instead of starting from scratch every time. This growing advocacy network accelerates learning, shares practical resources, and strengthens local efforts through collaboration.
Today, Stop Bad Data Centers serves as a national network where community advocates can access trusted research, strategic guidance, practical tools, and peer support. From the Seven Gateways Framework to expert connections, policy tracking, webinars, and collaborative working sessions, the project helps communities identify where they have leverage, respond more effectively to proposed developments, and build lasting local capacity.
Building the Networked Infrastructure Behind Local Action
Every proposed data center follows a different path, but the challenges community members encounter are remarkably consistent. Decisions about land use, utility interconnections, water resources, tax incentives, permitting, and ongoing oversight all create opportunities for meaningful public engagement. Stop Bad Data Centers helps people recognize those opportunities and connect with others who have already navigated them.
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Connecting Community Members: Residents facing a proposed data center shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. The network connects organizers, researchers, technical experts, and local leaders so successful ideas spread quickly across communities.
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Accelerating Shared Learning: Transforming local experience into shared knowledge through research, working groups, practical resources, webinars, and the Seven Gateways Framework, helping communities identify where they have the greatest opportunity to influence decisions.
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Strengthening Local Leadership: Providing the connections, tools, and support that help local advocates lead their own campaigns with greater confidence while contributing what they learn back to the broader network.
Why Networks Matter
Artificial intelligence is reshaping society at extraordinary speed, but the decisions surrounding the infrastructure that powers it are often made community by community. No single organization can anticipate every proposal, understand every local context, or develop every solution. Strong networks make it possible for communities to learn together, adapt faster, and build on one another’s successes instead of repeatedly starting from scratch.
That is the role Netcentric Campaigns is designed to play. By investing in relationships, shared learning, and practical collaboration, Stop Bad Data Centers helps transform isolated local efforts into a growing body of collective knowledge and civic capacity. As more people contribute what they’ve learned, the network itself grows stronger, making every local victory, lesson learned, and new resource available to others facing similar challenges.
Learn More & Get Involved
Whether you’re responding to a proposed data center, looking for trusted information, or ready to connect with others working on this issue, we encourage you to get involved.
Explore the Stop Bad Data Centers Network
Access research, practical tools, expert guidance, and a growing network of people working to challenge harmful AI infrastructure in their communities. Visit Stop Bad Data Centers.
Connect with Netcentric Campaigns
Learn how Netcentric Campaigns builds and supports advocacy networks that help people share knowledge, strengthen local leadership, and respond to complex challenges together. Contact us to learn more.
Updates and News
Building a Shared Strategy for Utility Decisions
The Bad Data Center network recently hosted a webinar that brought together residents and advocates working to understand how public utility commissions shape the energy decisions behind data center growth. Tanya Paslawski of Elevated Engagement walked participants through the ways commissions influence rates, grid investments, long-term planning, and large-load contracts.
It was one of the network’s most well-attended webinars to date, a sign of growing demand for practical guidance on utility regulation and energy justice. When people understand how utility commissions work, what opportunities for engagement exist, and which questions to ask, they can compare local experiences, identify common pressure points, and coordinate more effectively. That shared language helps turn separate data center fights into a stronger network for affordability, accountability, and energy justice.
Watch the Webinar ( Password: pjFI#G5^ )
Building visibility across local efforts
As data center fights spread across the country, communities are raising a broader set of questions about water, energy, land use, public benefit, surveillance, and local control.
That widening debate makes transparent, reliable information even more important. Industry claims and biased news coverage can make it sound as though major concerns are starting to get solved, but local leaders are still facing real tradeoffs about infrastructure, utilities, resources, and who gets to decide what belongs in a community.
Stop Bad Data Centers is helping people understand those tradeoffs, pressure-test claims, and connect with others facing similar fights. As the network grows, the work is also about creating the onboarding mechanisms and shared learning spaces that help a diverse community stay focused and effective.