this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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Showerthoughts

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If I have to fact-check the uncited claims made in news articles, doesn't that make me the journalist? (self.showerthoughts)
submitted 4 weeks ago by Kalcifer to c/[email protected]
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[–] Kalcifer 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

[…] The US Air Force has a massive astroturf farm at Eglin Air Force base pushing a lot of this, too. […]

Can you cite a source for this?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Besides public disclosure documents? Reddit admins accidentally outed them before they started masking their traffic.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160410083943/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html?m=1

[–] Kalcifer 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Reddit admins accidentally outed them before they started masking their traffic.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160410083943/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html?m=1

Very interesting. Thank you for the link! When digging into this a little more, I came across this Reddit post ^[1]^, which pointed me to this research paper ^[2]^ authored, in part, an associate of Eglin AFB ^[2.1]^.

References

  1. Title: "Reddit has removed their blog post identifying Eglin Air Force Base as the most reddit-addicted "city" - Eglin is often cited as the source of some government social-media propaganda/astroturfing programs". Author: "Mumberthrax" u/Mumberthrax. "r/Blackout2015". Reddit. Published: 2016-08-19T22:11:33.372Z. Accessed: 2024-12-13T03:55Z. https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/.
  2. Title: "Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity". Author: "Zhen Kan", "Justin Klotz", "Eduardo L. Pasiliao Jr", "Warren E. Dixon". arxiv. Published: 2014-02-23T18:13:47Z. Accessed: 2024-12-13T03:59Z. DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1402.5644. https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.5644v1.

      • One of the authors has a footnote stating that they are associated with

        Air Force Research Laboratory, Munitions Directorate, Eglin AFB, FL 32542, USA

[–] Kalcifer 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Besides public disclosure documents?

Do you have a handy source for those as well? Please don't interpret my prying for sources as sealioning — I'm very curious to read more about this, and I want to make sure that what I find is actually what you are referring to.