Meta\u2019s data center invasion of Canada has begun. It\u2019s as good a time as any to remember that Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have a very strange history with Canada.<\/p>\n
In a blog post, the company says it\u2019s \u201cbreaking ground<\/a>\u201d on what\u2019s meant to be a one gigawatt AI data center in Sturgeon\u00a0County, part of the province of\u00a0Alberta. That\u2019s about 350 miles due north of the U.S. border\u2014way up there, but hardly the middle of nowhere. In fact it\u2019s just north of Edmonton, the northernmost North American city with over 1 million people.<\/p>\n Alberta is a famously low-regulation environment, sometimes called \u201cthe Texas of Canada<\/a>.\u201d A Meta spokesperson told CNBC<\/a>, \u201cThis specific location met the factors we typically look for: good access to infrastructure, a robust electric grid and access to energy, a strong pool of talent, and a great set of community partners that helped us move this project forward.\u201d<\/p>\n This data center, Meta\u2019s blog post claims, \u201crepresents an investment of more than CAD $13 billion and will support over 3,000 construction workers at peak and more than 300 operational jobs.\u201d It\u2019s reportedly Meta\u2019s 33rd data center<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s not clear from the blog post if CEO Mark Zuckerberg can personally supervise construction of this data center. I hope you\u2019ll forgive the detour, but:<\/p>\n In 2019, Zuckerberg was subpoenaed by Canada\u2019s parliament in order to testify before the privacy and ethics committee of Canada\u2019s\u00a0House of Commons. He disobeyed the subpoena<\/a>, and subsequently received\u00a0an open-ended summons<\/a>. That summons means that if Zuckerberg ever enters Canada for any reason, he\u2019s legally required to testify before Parliament or face the possibility of a contempt charge<\/a>. It\u2019s not clear if this summons is still active.<\/p>\n I thought about this bit of ancient Mark Zuckerberg history recently when I read that Zuck\u2019s $300 million megayacht, named Launchpad, was spotted near Canadian soil<\/a>, just before a World Cup game in Vancouver on June 18. But the vessel had just spent several days in Seattle, so it wasn\u2019t clear if that was evidence of a soccer fan risking an international incident to watch Canada annihilate Qatar, or, perhaps just Zuck\u2019s crew shopping for cheap sundries on the opposite side of the U.S. border.<\/p>\n The Zuckerberg-Canada trivia rabbit hole gets weirder, however, because Meta was originally a Canadian AI company before Zuckerberg owned it. In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan\u2019s philanthropic initiative, CZI, paid an undisclosed sum<\/a> for Meta, an AI-based science research startup founded by Canadian siblings Sam and Amy Molyneux in Toronto in 2010. CZI then transferred ownership of Meta\u2019s brand assets<\/a> to Facebook during that company\u2019s rebrand to Meta.<\/p>\n Also, a 2023 law in Canada called the Online News Act requires Google and Meta to pay the Canadian news media when their tech platforms serve their news content. Meta responded by blocking news for Canadians<\/a> on its platforms. To this day, if you\u2019re in Canada and you look for news on Facebook or Instagram, you can\u2019t get it. According to the New York Times<\/a>, searching news terms on those platforms in Canada mostly just gets you right-wing memes and political parties\u2019 video ads.<\/p>\n Gizmodo reached out to Meta on Wednesday night for information about Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s legal status in Canada, but did not receive a reply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s data center invasion of Canada has begun. 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