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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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the_dunk_tank
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It's the dunk tank.
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A few comments down threw some sense into the mix saying it sounds like astroturfing is at least playing some role, and someone linked a very interesting web archive link: Reddit admins accidentally reveal "Eglin Air Force base as the most "Reddit addicted city", from 2013. (and here's a link to the web archive page if the original reddit post goes missing)
I found this paper that a Redditor said was funded by Eglin which shows how to influence conversations online and control majority opinion, but keep in mind I haven't read the paper nor looked any deeper into the authors so take it with a grain of salt, unless you wanna look further.
Edit: apparently the official explanation is that Eglin is where military VPN traffic goes through, so everyone browsing Reddit on military networks does through Eglin. Kinda sus but seems reasonable imo
having all vpn traffic go through the same military base seems like it would be a major vulnerability
They have one neck now
There's no way the military just has a single VPN endpoint. That sounds insanely unreliable for an organization that's supposed to be able to handle war.
That paper is... something.
Basically all that calculus to say that individuals are influenced most by their closest peers and allow for more difference of opinion from them than strangers, therefore "agents" of a state (not kidding) should exploit this and find some way to use person-to-person social connections as a more ~~covert~~ decentralized way to manipulate people.
Pretty fucked tbh, and the Elgin airbase credit is there (more concerningly it's the research lab Munitions Directorate). The way things are going, I'm not convinced they'll ever find that "directed spanning tree" of influence that glowies are praying for. They've also got a whole paragraph of assumptions, like "the social states of leaders are immutable". LOL maybe they're not sending their best.
If someone is in the military, do that have to use this VPN on every device at all times?