Every App a TikTok Clone ⇥ about.fb.com

Tom Alison, “head of Facebook”, made some noise today by announcing a forthcoming change to the platform that seems to, in effect, turn it into TikTok:

So later this year, we’ll begin testing a reimagined experience that puts a subset of people who we think want more video on Facebook into full-screen video the moment they open the app. People will have the option to opt out and go back to a Feed-first experience if they choose, and Classic Feed will always be available as the second tab in the app, just one click away. We’ll start this test internationally in video-heavy countries and explore bringing it to the US next year.

Alison did not share any screenshots or previews of what this will look like, but come on. Meta’s transformation of Instagram into a U.S.-made TikTok clone has been wildly successful for a company obsessed with user engagement metrics, so why not do the same for Facebook, right?

Alison also said users will now be able to verify their accounts with a selfie, a free service it is calling Facebook Verified, which is not to be confused with its paid Meta Verified feature.

This did not get nearly as much attention, though, and I think it is telling — a new app specifically for Facebook Marketplace:

Seller is a Facebook app that puts everything a seller needs in one place: AI-powered listing creation, a unified inbox, inventory management, and performance insights. It’s connected to the same Facebook network — your buyers and community are still right where they are. What changes is your workflow. If you’re listing thirty items a week, it gets a lot simpler.

Ticket resale websites were marketed as a way to recoup the cost when you can no longer attend an event. Uber was originally pitched as a way to make better use of idle black cars. Airbnb was a place for people to list their spare bedroom or rarely-used vacation property. All of these were lies by omission, as they were quickly professionalized. And Marketplace is no different. It is no longer the place where you put up your lightly used furniture and old gaming consoles for a reasonable rate. It is a full-on supplemental income for many, and Meta’s new app recognizes that sad reality.

Podcasts Are Growing, but That Does Not Necessarily Track for Podcast Apps ⇥ uncommonapps.nyc

Dustin Bluck, developer of Castro:

You might have a theory that there’s a funnel and growth in podcasts *must* ultimately be good for the apps. Like YouTube and TikTok introduce people to the concept of podcasts via shorter videos, and as certain users become more enthusiastic about a particular creator or the whole concept, they migrate to specialty apps to ensure they never miss an episode. I like this theory. It’s a good story, but I see very little evidence of this happening. Instead, the apps are largely fighting to retain the same cohort of users who have been using podcast apps since ~2015 while the world moves on.

I am curious to know if this is true for apps other than Castro. I do not want to overindex on it alone. However, the growth in video podcasting is a limiter for third-party apps.

One of the problems with available stats like those from Buzzsprout and Transistor is that, because they track RSS feeds of podcasts delivered through their platforms, they do not include YouTube subscribers or views. That is missing a huge chunk of an audience: Edison’s 2026 survey (PDF) indicates YouTube usage for podcasts is higher than any other medium. Because video podcasts hosted on YouTube are played through YouTube, they are siloed and there is no third-party app support.

Anil Dash wrote, in 2014, that the simple phrase wherever you get your podcasts is a “radical statement”:

[…] Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that’s supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that’s not owned by any one company, that can’t be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.

Video podcasting changes that. In its simplest form, it is just a YouTube channel, which means it is siloed and controlled by Google. Spotify also supports video but only in its app. Apple introduced its own take using HLS earlier this year; though it also uses a proprietary format, it is one third-party apps can support. But YouTube is YouTube; it is where people go for video. The walled garden is coming for podcasting.

Kylie Jenner Is Barely Using Her Own Meta Glasses ⇥ businessinsider.com

Meta, last month:

We’re launching Meta Glasses with three frame styles offering distinct silhouettes that suit different faces, moods, and occasions:

[…]

  • Meta Glasses by Kylie — A unique slim oval frame designed in collaboration with Kylie Jenner and inspired by her personal style.

Katie Notopoulos, Business Insider, today:

Interestingly, since the launch of her namesake frames, Jenner doesn’t seem to be wearing them much in public. At the World Cup finals, she wore what appeared to be different tapered oval sunnies, and at a Knicks game, she used an old-school point-and-shoot camera to take photos of her boyfriend, rather than Meta glasses.

She did wear them in a recent Instagram post promoting her swimwear line.

Surely a good sign when a celebrity endorses a product they do not really care for. Imagine lending your entire image and your voice to something and then not promoting the hell out of it. Then again, imagine getting paid all that money and then realizing you are not contractually obligated to do so.

Grain Is a Photo-First Social Network Built on AT Protocol ⇥ grain.social

Chad Miller has launched Grain, described as:

[…] a photo-first social app.

Post galleries, share 24-hour stories, and browse feeds by following, For You, camera, or location.

The most obvious comparison is Instagram, but without videos. I have been trying Grain for several months; it is really fun and worth checking out despite an icon that is, charitably, difficult to love. It is built on AT Protocol, the same as Bluesky, so you can log in with the same credentials. Here is a recent photo set I posted.

If you are on an iOS 27 beta build, you will probably need the TestFlight version that includes a fix for a crashing bug.

Judge Dismisses Google’s Lawsuit Against SerpApi ⇥ seroundtable.com

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable:

Last December, Google sued SerpApi over scraping its search results, and now a court has granted SerpApi’s motion to dismiss the case. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed these claims with leave to amend, giving Google 21 days to refile its complaint if it can demonstrate authorization from copyright owners.

You can see the court filing here (PDF) which basically says Google brought claims under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), alleging SerpApi bypassed its anti-bot barrier (“SearchGuard”). However, Section 1201 only protects technological measures that restrict access to copyrighted works.

I had complicated feelings about this lawsuit because while I think there is little distinction between the web scraping activities of each party, and the effect of limiting SerpApi would be to reinforce Google’s illegal search monopoly, a win for SerpApi also seems to invalidate the meagre control website owners have over scraping. These restrictions are noticeable during normal web use and are quite frustrating. But without effective copyright reform, there really are few options for choosing whether you want your work to be incorporated into training data.

Reddit’s comparable lawsuit against SerpApi, among others, is ongoing.

Google Says It Still Sends ‘Billions of Clicks’ to Websites ⇥ seroundtable.com

Google’s Nick Fox on, for some reason, LinkedIn:

People also asked if AI in Search would mean that people never click through to websites anymore.

Actually, as we’ve shared before, we continue to send billions of clicks to the web every day through Search. And we’ve designed our AI features in Search to connect people to websites. In fact, we’re now sending billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search alone – and we’re just getting started.

The specific effects of Google’s A.I. search features is made murkier by all the other features the company has to answer queries immediately instead of sending them to an external website. Nevertheless, the claim that Google still sends “billions of clicks” is just another way of saying Google still has a monopoly on the world’s web searches. It is a substantially similar statement to the one Google issued a year ago, and something the company is only repeating because the New York Times asked for comment.

If only Google had some kind of dashboard or console with information about a website’s search performance.

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable:

Google even built out the AI performance reports in Search Console but excluded clicks. This is because Google is “continuing to work with website owners to understand what insights will be most helpful to inform their strategies” and Google doesn’t think those are clicks. Nope, because Google does not want us to see our click-through rates from AI Search features compared to traditional search features.

I am sure this is a mere oversight that Google will be eager to correct.

Gurman: Apple Set to Launch Device Leasing Program ⇥ macrumors.com

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple and Klarna are partnering on a new “Apple Upgrade” program set to launch in the U.S. on Tuesday, July 28, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

The program will allow you to finance most iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models, with a 24-month term for iPhones and Apple Watches and a 36-month term for iPads and Macs. Customers will be able to pay off the device early during the term, upgrade early to a newer device, or keep or return the existing device after the term.

In 2017, working with McKinsey, Apple said its supply chain would eventually become a closed loop, without specifying a timeframe or even a firm methodology for how it might do so. Perhaps encouraging people to treat devices as leased objects exchanged every few years gets closer to this goal, as Apple can capture a greater number of sold devices. (Be honest: how many of you have a bunch of old products sitting around unused? There is gold in them thar hills.)

Then again, the other thing I thought about is the rising cost of components, and the negative effect increasing prices could have on new purchases. Spreading the cost out over monthly payments might make some people feel less burdened by a dramatically pricier new Mac — something like what has happened with car sales. In the United States, for example, the most common way to purchase a new car is increasingly through financing, which divides the purchase price into monthly payments with added interest. Because the cost is divided up, it means manufacturers can increase prices and buyers can be pulled into longer and costlier payment plans.

Apple, of course, already has financing options for its new product purchases — Affirm in Canada, and a slew of options in the U.S. — as it has rapidly become a bank. If a large enough number of new Apple product buyers choose financing instead of outright purchases, it could incentivize more expensive products and longer payment plans. If you read that and got excited, you probably own lots of Apple stock.

Blaming Data Centres, Alberta Electricity Industry Expects Tripling of Power Prices ⇥ nationalobserver.com

If you believe Meta, its forthcoming Albertan data centre will be, at worst, unnoticeable to people across this province:

We pay the full costs of our data centers’ energy use so consumers aren’t negatively impacted, and fund new and upgraded infrastructure. We worked closely with Greenlight Limited Partnership, Altalink, Capitol Power, and the Alberta Electric System Operator to plan for and meet our energy needs years in advance of this data center coming online.

Sure sounds like the commitments of a stand-up corporate citizen. However, if you listen to the power companies, they tell a somewhat different story.

Rory White, the National Observer:

In its latest earnings call, [Capital Power’s] CEO Avik Dey predicted a “return to higher pricing” telling analysts that he couldn’t rule out prices of “$80 or $90” per megawatt hour of electricity by early 2028. By 2029, rival company TransAlta is predicting an average of $100 — more than triple the average price this year — a high not seen since the province’s 2021-2023 energy crisis.

Driving this increase is the province’s reliance on natural gas power, which cannot be built fast enough to accommodate data centre demand, according to Will Noel, a senior electricity analyst at the Pembina Institute. “In Canada and internationally, we’re seeing this huge crunch in gas turbine supply shortages,” he said. The province has also backed itself into a corner in terms of its options for alternatives. “Alberta has over the past couple of years really stifled the growth in its wind and solar.”

White reports this would increase the electricity costs to a typical household by “hundreds of dollars more per year”. However, as White caveats, these prices have precedent as recently as three years ago — and that undersells it. In 2022, electricity costs were as much as five times above current rates. Even without adjusting for inflation, we are currently paying less than we did from 2018–2020, and a tripling of the current rate would have a nominal cost similar to that of 2008. That is not to say this is good, but I think it is worthwhile seeing the “tripling” figure within the context of recent fluctuations.

Apple to Recap WWDC Announcements in Calgary This Week ⇥ calgary.tech

An un-bylined report from Calgary.tech:

Apple will make a rare conference appearance in Calgary next week, joining the inaugural Swift Rockies gathering for iOS developers at the Calgary Zoo.

Taking place July 22 and 23, Swift Rockies is a boutique, single-track conference created by Calgary-based iOS engineer Raman Singh. The independently organized event is capped at 180 attendees and designed to encourage closer interaction between speakers and developers through round-table seating and an intimate format.

Via Jason Anthony Guy, who writes:

[…] Even if the session being presented is one they offer globally, it’s fantastic to see Apple’s Developer Relations team again relating to developers outside of an Apple-managed event. That’s a welcome shift from the last few years that I was there (even pre-pandemic). My favorite part of being on that team was direct developer engagement. I hope it marks a return to form for WWDR.

Swift Rockies is sold out. According to the conference’s website, the presentation is open to any registered Apple developer regardless of whether they have a pass, though it does seem to be largely a recap of the biggest WWDC announcements. I have no idea if there is still space but, if you would like to go, you need to submit your request to Apple by midnight.

Also, if you are going to Swift Rockies and have never been to Calgary, send me a message and I can give you a couple of recommendations for things to do near the conference, if you want.

Meta Faces Tennessee Trial Over Instagram Design ⇥ reuters.com

Diana Novak Jones, Reuters:

Meta Platforms faces trial in Tennessee on Monday over the state’s claims that Instagram’s design is to blame for a youth mental-health ​crisis, one of several trials in the coming weeks testing allegations that the company’s social media platforms were intentionally built to be addictive.

I imagine Meta will spend considerable time trying to nail down a definition of “addiction”. The lawsuit makes no attempt to define the term, though it does quote several internal Meta communications acknowledging this as an outcome of the company’s products.1 In a legal sense, this might be an important question.

The term, however, seems loaded: is Instagram really comparable to cigarettes? As a matter of practicality and ethics, I have personally found it more useful to think of this in terms of whether Instagram and its competitors are intended to be hypnotic and compelling beyond users’ comfort levels. I believe they are. A social media app today looks more like gambling, where you wager your time, than it does a continuation of real-world social experiences.

It is therefore too bad this lawsuit and others like it are exclusively related to the effects they have on children. I understand why, but I think we all need greater control over what we see. There are people I know whose TikTok feeds are absolutely full of A.I.-generated nonsense, often a mix of not-harmful trash and malicious information. This will not be solved by simply telling people of all ages to just say no to using these apps.

  1. If the name “Skrmetti” rings a bell for you, it might be because he was a party in one the U.S Supreme Court decisions that permits discrimination against trans people. ↥︎

Copyright Is Not Enough ⇥ thedial.world

Zoey Forbes, a U.K.-based attorney, in the Dial:

One hundred and forty years on from the Berne Convention, the basic principles of copyright remain the same, but GenAI poses a threat to authors different from anything that has existed before. Its novel technology is not only destabilizing what it means to reproduce works, but what it means to produce them.

This is a terrific and well-rounded exploration of copyright law and generative artificial intelligence from a non-U.S. perspective. That matters because the U.S. has a carve-out for “fair use” of copyrighted works, which is something generative A.I. companies are relying on for their defence of their unethical and maybe illegal practices. If it holds, it makes the rest of the world less desirable for A.I. development which, I fear, means it becomes a race to the bottom for all the countries that want a slice of this well-funded pie.

Breach of A.I. Music Generator Suno Reveals Scraping of Music From Deezer and YouTube ⇥ 404media.co

Jason Koebler, 404 Media:

The AI music generation tool Suno scraped millions of songs and lyrics from YouTube Music, Deezer, and Genius, as well as from the stock music libraries Pond5, Jamendo, Freesound, the International Music Score Library Project, and podcasts via RSS feeds, according to a hacker who breached the company and shared data about Suno’s training libraries with 404 Media. The hacker was also able to access user information for hundreds of thousands of Suno’s customers, as well as Stripe payment information, they said.

Suno is fighting several lawsuits, including one filed by UMG in which it makes the argument its use is sufficiently transformative. But people have been prosecuted for the mere act of downloading hundreds to thousands of songs. This line of argument suggests to me that, beyond some astronomical number of downloads, it becomes entirely legal because no single song will be of much consequence.

Permanent Daylight Saving Time ⇥ leancrew.com

Dr. Drang:

A couple of days ago, Casey Liss took a break from arguing about temperature scales to tweak me about the recent passage of the Sunshine Protection Act by the House. The Act would make Daylight Saving Time permanent, something Casey knows I disapprove of. A similar bill passed the Senate a few years ago, and Donald Trump has said he will sign this one, so there’s a decent chance it’ll become law. Let’s see what will happen if it does.

Like many people, I was all ready to abolish DST until 2013, when I read Drang’s article advocating for the twice-yearly ritual of clock changing. I was converted.

Five years ago, the Albertan government asked voters whether we should “adopt year-round Daylight Saving Time, which is summer hours”. A bare majority, 50.2%, voted against it. So, of course, our government has adopted permanent DST, and we will not be turning our clocks back this November. This aligns with the practices of our neighbouring provinces.

The United States at least has the advantage of a large population living fairly far south. On the shortest day of the year, Los Angeles still sees nearly 10 hours of daylight and over 14 on the longest day. In somewhere as far north as Calgary, the difference in daylight hours is far greater — from under 8 hours in December to over 16 in June. That means the effects of permanent DST are highly acute. The sun will not rise here before 8:00 am from October 15 through February 8, with the latest sunrises at 9:39 am for several days in a row.

Theory is different from reality and perhaps my mind will be changed if it is still daylight after 5:00 pm on the shortest days of the year. I look forward to that. But this has been tried before — unsuccessfully — and I question why this time would be any different.

And Another Thing About Squircles ⇥ mjtsai.com

If you cannot get enough squircle talk, Michael Tsai has a whole roundup of different takes, some of which you may not have seen already.

Here is another thing: robbing icons of a variable for creative excellence and flexibility is just another form of context collapse. You know how Instagram and YouTube are host to professionals and amateurs alike? There are benefits to creating an impression of similar legitimacy, but the rigidity of social media platforms’ formats also collapses the difference between legitimate information and absolute nonsense.

Losing some of the artistry in an icon makes it more difficult to distinguish between legitimate and well-crafted Mac apps, and everything else. It is not a perfect proxy, to be sure, and there are some very nice squircle icons. But it is nevertheless an unfortunate change that makes apps of varying levels of quality look more similar.

Amazon Will Print Book-Length A.I. Gibberish on Demand ⇥ nytimes.com

Kashmir Hill, of the New York Times (gift link), learned about an A.I.-generated biography of her for sale on Amazon for $27. It is just one of many wholly-generated books available there:

Amazon does not mind if people hawk A.I.-generated books on its platform, unless they are truly and deeply terrible. “Charlie Kirk: An Inspiring Journey of Young Political Conservative and Activist Who Fights for America,” published in February 2025, became an Amazon best seller after Mr. Kirk was killed last September — which means it probably sold thousands of copies. But after dozens of scathing reviews called it “mind-numbing,” “a scam” and “a disgrace,” Amazon took it down.

Too bad about all the trees killed for this print-on-demand nonsense, though at least it fits with Amazon’s decline into one of the world’s biggest retailers of sketchy, counterfeit, and knock-off products.

Morgan Stanley Says the ‘Space’ in SpaceX Is Worth About $8 Per Share ⇥ ft.com

Bryce Elder, on the Financial Times’ Alphaville blog:

Here’s paragraph one of the Morgan Stanley’s SpaceX initiation note:

With an ‘X of 1’ position in space infrastructure, we believe SpaceX can convert energy into intelligence at scale with optionality to monetize through a range of consumer and enterprise solutions for the next era of AI… the final frontier.

[Adam] Jonas — formerly the Wall Street bank’s Tesla and occasionally other auto companies analyst — was last year reallocated to the sort of free-radical futurologist role we’d thought had been cornered by Shingy.

Today’s news that SpaceX has already started dipping below its IPO valuation reminded me of this piece. Remind me — is being compared to Shingy good?

At any rate, Morgan Stanley estimates that the combination of X and Grok will grow this year to generate only a little less revenue than Twitter did in 2021, its last full fiscal year as a public company. Fear not, investors, as the bank also says SpaceX will make $17 billion in “enterprise A.I.”, and then nearly triple that next year. I guess everyone wants to give money to the CSAM and misogynist fantasy generator for business.

Apple Updates Its Advertising Policies ⇥ ads.apple.com

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

In a newly published Apple Advertising Services policy, effective as of July 14, 2026, the iPhone maker shares its rules for advertising on Apple Maps. Notably, it prohibits the broad category of home services businesses, like plumbing, electrical, locksmith, HVAC, pest control, roofing, and general contracting services, among others.

If Apple is interested in updating its advertising policy further, I suggest none. I spent lots of money on its nominally premium products, and I pay a monthly fee to use the company’s services. Alas, here we are.

Apple is also prohibiting ads for cryptocurrency ATMs. Also, there is this:

2.7.2 Ad content that directly or indirectly promotes or facilitates the sale of products or services that compete with Apple hardware products (e.g., mobile phones/smartphones, tablets, notebook/desktop computers, and smart watches) is reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

I do not see this in its previous restricted or unacceptable ad guidelines.

Eric Benjamin Seufert, who writes Mobile Dev Memo, noticed the phrase “on the relevant Apple software applications or Apple devices” has been changed to remove references to Apple-specific devices or software:

The new language could simply accommodate the availability of Apple-owned services on the web and through third-party devices and operating systems; the Apple TV app, for instance, is available on smart TVs, streaming devices, and game consoles. But the addition of “other properties” is conspicuously broad and appears to give Apple the contractual latitude to distribute ads beyond its own services entirely. This would allow for a material expansion of the company’s advertising surface area.

Apple Maps is also available on the web and is used by DuckDuckGo, so this could simply be covering that inevitable broader placement. But the reality is that Apple is now operating an advertising business, and putting more ads in more places is one way to make the numbers go up. Not the user satisfaction numbers, of course — I cannot imagine a single user who wants more ads in their life, unless they own shares in this company. But it will print money at no cost, and that is what the people running a huge corporation with little competition want to do. It was not inevitable until Apple made it so by opening the door.

The Shape of Apps ⇥ parakeet.co

Paul Kafasis, writing on the Rogue Amoeba blog:

With last year’s release of MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple made a mess of app icons. In the first betas of MacOS 27 (Golden Gate), however, there are signs of a turnaround. We’re urging Apple to continue making improvements, by restoring the ability for MacOS app icons to have distinct shapes.

Kafasis reignited my simmering frustration with the mandated squircle in MacOS. My Dock contains three of the apps shown in the collection in this post: MarsEdit, NetNewsWire, and Sketch. I like their current more-uniform icons fine enough, but they are less distinguished than the ones these applications used to have.

But maybe that is the whole point?

Louie Mantia, writing on the Parakeet blog:

The shape of apps is a squircle. And it has been proven to work for everyone. Companies can use their logo as an app icon. Designers can create something specifically for the platform. And both of these get to look like an app. Whether people consider the squircle a container or a canvas, this uniform appearance communicates its function: a squircle represents an app, just like how a piece of paper represents a digital document, or a folder represents, well, a folder.

Semantically, there’s something really beautiful about that. As an icon designer, I appreciate that different types of things have visual distinction.

Mantia touches on all the pragmatic reasons to unify the shape of icons in an operating system, all of which I have considered, and then drops the above paragraphs — and things started to make more sense to me. This is a different way to think about it. This is not a situation where a cleaner looks like a zesty beverage with toxic consequences. The shared general function of these icons does help communicate something and makes them less ambiguous in that sense.

But a broad category of functionality is only part of the story of an icon and — with respect to Mantia’s long and illustrious history of work in this area, and that of co-Parakeeter Luka Grafera — taking away a difference of shape also limits what an icon can communicate. It may not be a cleaning product that looks and is packaged like juice, but imagine if every consumable liquid was in identical bottles with only a different label. You might go for something refreshing after a workout and end up drinking soup. Sure, you can argue the label for a beverage should not look similar to the one for soup, but the two would be far easier to distinguish if they were not in the same package.

I still think constraining designers to a singular shape, while more clearly defining specific objects as apps, has made it harder to distinguish between them, particularly when combined with the glassy and contrast-killing layer effects of Tahoe. Happily, though not retreating on the squircle, the shapes within icons in MacOS Golden Gate are at least more clearly defined.

Meta’s ‘Activity from Other Businesses’ ⇥ yashgarg.dev

Yash Garg:

A friend pointed me to this option in Meta Accounts Center called “Activity from other businesses”, which shows “activity sent from other businesses or organizations to show you relevant content.” Their main help page doesn’t even work in my region.

If you dig around in your Meta account privacy settings, you can turn this feature off. While you are there, though, you might take a scroll through the audience-based advertising list. These are companies that have, most often for me, “uploaded or used a list” of email addresses or phone numbers. In my case, this is hundreds of businesses — some of which I recognize or can see why they would have my contact information, and many of which I have never heard of. Advertisers are supposed to have permission to use this information, of course, but there is basically no way for me to confirm whether I gave permission or report that I did not. Restricting further use is also comically unfriendly: it is a button two levels deep and, for all but the first four advertisers, you must click a “See more” button each time to display the full list.

Update: Rodrigo Ghedin counts four separate privacy-hostile things Meta has done or is rumoured to be working on since the beginning of June.

Lies Told About Data Centres ⇥ karlbode.com

Karl Bode:

One lie that companies have been telling local municipalities is that if they greenlight a massive local AI data center, it will immediately bring a flood of savvy innovators to your podunk-ass town.

The promotional materials for Kevin O’Leary’s still hypothetical “data centre park” imagine a futuristic campus full of bright young minds doing complicated A.I. stuff on-site in north-central Alberta. But why would they be there — fifty kilometres from the nearest city and 500 kilometres from Edmonton, the nearest major city? Why would they not be in Vancouver, or Silicon Valley, or anywhere else with an internet connection?

Also:

These companies aren’t coincidentally aiming construction at states and municipalities that are too broken and corrupted to put up meaningful regulatory opposition. […]

That is one reason why we are seeing a bunch of these proposals here. And these companies benefit from a lack of transparency.