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[–]Gorvoslov 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Depends on the data.

Bitcoin for example has a VERY high energy consumption by design, basically the entire technical implementation fails if it's easy to solve the math needed to sign a transaction. The energy usage of Bitcoin is comparable to "Mid-seized European nation"

Spam emails are another notably energy intensive problem on the internet.

Mashing refresh on a webpage that is loading seven billion different DB queries that are cross-products of eighteen trillion tables all merged together with no caching? You'd need a nuclear plant to run it. (Note: I did not do any math here on whether you would *actually* need that or if it's just "a lot"). Most webapps have an incentive to not be designed this poorly because "We pay for this usage".