Politics,
read clearly.
Reporting, analysis, and human patterns, ordered by publication date and built to be read beyond the headline.
Less attention has gone to a structural detail that matters more: the exemption underneath all of it runs for up to 50 years.
The Direct Message: Virginia didn't decide whether data centers should keep their tax break.
The company already relies on AI for roughly 50% of content and ad review decisions across Facebook, Instagram, and its other platforms.
The Direct Message: An 86 percent landslide is not really a referendum on one data center.
A policy designed to pump the brakes on new tax breaks for data centers instead triggered a stampede to grab the last ones available.
A Texas law banning platforms from showing targeted ads to minors lasted less than two years without ever being enforced.
Three states changed what counts as lawful handling of personal data on the same day this month, and the changes didn't move in the same direction.
The Direct Message: Whoever owns the proprietary context, the data, the decision logic, the memory of what actually worked, owns the value.
Read quickly, that number sounds like reassurance.
The Direct Message: The backlash is real, but it is happening at the margins of a system that, for now, remains mostly unchanged.
Indiana's data center sales tax exemption was pitched as a tool to attract a growing industry.
The Direct Message: An exemption written for a $50 million data center in 2008 has no honest application to a $5 billion AI facility in 2025.
The Direct Message: Marketing’s measurement problem wasn’t AI.
The number that changed everything was not a small one.
The Direct Message: Marketing built its search assumptions when Google sent 45 clicks.
Try this for a second, even though it stings a little.
