Meta’s data center attack on Canada has begun. As good a time as any to remember that Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have a very strange history with Canada.
In a blog post, the company says, “break ground” about what the proposed one-gigawatt AI data center is in Sturgeon County, part of Alberta. It’s about 350 miles north of the U.S. border — up there, but in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it’s just north of Edmonton, North America’s northernmost city of over 1 million people.
Alberta is a famously low-regulation environment, sometimes “Canada’s Texas.” Meta spokesperson told CNBC“This particular location met the factors we typically look for: good access to infrastructure, a robust grid and access to energy, a strong talent pool, and many community partners to help move this project forward.”
The data center, Meta’s blog post claims, “represents an investment of more than $13 billion and will support more than 3,000 construction workers and more than 300 operational jobs at peak.” According to information Meta’s 33rd data center.
However, it is not clear from the blog post that CEO Mark Zuckerberg may personally oversee the construction of this data center. I hope you’ll forgive the detour, but:
In 2019, Zuckerberg was subpoenaed by the Canadian parliament to testify before the Canadian House of Commons privacy and ethics committee. He did not obey the summonsand was subsequently acquired open ended challenge. The subpoena means that if Zuckerberg ever enters Canada for any reason, he must legally testify before parliament or they face the possibility of contempt charges. It is not clear if this challenge is still active.
I thought about this ancient history of Mark Zuckerberg when I read recently that Zuck has a $300 million megayacht called Launchpad. It was discovered near Canadian soilJust before the World Cup game in Vancouver on June 18. But the ship had only been in Seattle for a few days, so it wasn’t clear whether this was evidence of a soccer fan risking an international incident to watch Canada destroy Qatar, or perhaps just Zuck’s crew shopping for cheap goods across the US border.
The Zuckerberg-Canada trivia rabbit hole gets weirder because Meta It was originally a Canadian AI company before Zuckerberg owned it. In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s philanthropic initiative, CZI, paid an undisclosed amount For Meta, an AI-based scientific research startup founded in Toronto in 2010 by Canadian siblings Sam and Amy Molyneux. After CZI Transferred ownership of Meta’s brand assets to Facebook during that company’s rebranding to Meta.
Also, a 2023 law called the Canada Online News Act requires Google and Meta to pay Canadian news media when their tech platforms serve up news content. Meta replied blocks news for Canadians on their platforms. So far, if you’re in Canada and you’re looking for news on Facebook or Instagram, you can’t get it. According to the New York TimesSearching for news terms on these platforms in Canada mostly yields right-wing memes and video ads from political parties.
Gizmodo reached out to Meta on Wednesday night for information on Mark Zuckerberg’s legal status in Canada, but did not receive a response.
