I originally posted this on /r/AirlinerAbduction2014, but I think it has relevance here too. “These videos” refers to the infamous airliner videos, but it also really applies to a lot of skepticism.
If you post anything critical of these videos, or of the UAP topic in general, you will surely be greeted by a barrage of downvotes and comments claiming that you are a shill. It has gotten so bad that even some believers call one another shills simply for disagreeing on very minor points.
This stifles discussion, and frankly, turns the sub into an echo chamber. But even more than that, it’s based on faulty assumptions and completely fact-free word of mouth rumors.
The theory goes like this:
Reddit, years ago, published a blog post about the most “reddit addicted” areas of the country. Coming in at number one for most reddit-addicted city was … Eglin Air Force Base.
At some point after this, the link to this blog post died. This prompted a user to post this post, claiming:
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
If you click on that post, you will see that they provide – in addition to the blog post – three citations. This is what makes up the “often cited” claim they make. Let’s take these citations one-by-one:
Here’s a paper about Eglin being used as part of a program testing the power of online astroturfing/propaganda: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf
Click on that link, and you’ll find a paper that indeed was co-authored by someone from Eglin Air Force Base. They’re only one of four authors, but it is true they are one of the authors at least.
That author is a man named Eduardo L. Pasiliao Jr. You can search him on Google Scholar to see the types of research he does, very little of which (if any) is about social media. Most of it, frankly, I barely understand. But the parts which I do understand seem to suggest his research interest is in mathematical networking problems. Perhaps some of you are better versed in this world than I am and can provide some insights on these other papers. They do not, to my eye, say anything about posting on Reddit.
Let’s look at this paper itself, emphasis mine:
When making a decision or forming an opinion, indi- viduals tend to communicate with parents, friends, or colleagues and take advice from social peers. Social con- nections such as friendship, kinship, and other relation- ships can influence the decisions they make. Some indi- viduals (e.g., parents, teachers, mentors, and celebrities) may exhibit more powerful influences in others’ decision making, and the underlying social network enables the influence to pass from influential individuals to receptive individuals. Containment control is a particular class of consensus problems… in which fol- lower agents are under the influence of leaders through local information exchange in a leader-follower network. In results such as [14–17], distributed containment con- trol algorithms are developed for agents with integer- order dynamics where the group of followers is driven to a convex hull spanned by multiple leaders’ states un- der an undirected, directed or switching topology. This paper examines how such methods can be leveraged to manipulate a social network. This work specifically aims to investigate how peer pressure from social leaders af- fects consensus beliefs (e.g., opinions, emotional states, purchasing decisions, political affiliation, etc.) within a social network, and how an interaction algorithm can be developed such that the group social behavior can be driven to a desired end (i.e., a convex hull spanned by the leaders’ states).
Uh oh!!! Proof of SHILLS!!!
Let’s read on:
To illustrate the proposed control algorithms, simula- tions are performed on a karate club network described in [33]. The karate club network considered in this sec- tion consists of 3 social leaders and 7 followers, and is represented as a directed graph in Fig. 1. The solid ar- row connecting two individuals in Fig. 1 indicates an established social bond (e.g., friendship) and the di- rected influence between individuals. Note that the lead- ers can not be influenced, while the followers can be in- fluenced by social peers as well as social leaders.
That’s right. This article is a mathematical simulation of a group of seven friends in a karate club. That’s what’s being studied here. The club, if you read the footnote, comes from a 1977 study. The article is a simulation of the social effects of this karate club. That’s right – they didn’t even test this on actual people. It’s a mathematical proof of network effects using a hypothetical example.
Moreover, you can see that their conclusions here is that you can actually only achieve this kind of social group manipulation if you are perceived as a social leader or friend.
How many people who users in this sub are calling shills have been perceived as a leader? If you wanted to be perceived as a leader in this sub, would you post in favor of the videos or in opposition to the videos? Food for thought.
To be clear, that was the only evidence the OP of the original Reddit comment claiming that Eglin is “often cited” as a location for social media shills. Another user replied with more “evidence.” Let’s look at that evidence:
/u/DonGeronimo has provided these links as additional context:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/eglin-air-force-base-busted-gaming-reddit.html
Oh wait, you can’t because both of those links are dead! Surely this is a conspiracy by the Eglin shills? Or, hear me out, “Washington’s Blog” may not be the well-vetted news outlet that Redditor thought it was:
Other recurrent themes at Washington’s Blog include (by way of random sample only):
The Sun affects many more aspects of our lives than scientists had realized
Yeah, conspiracy stuff from a misleadingly named website that mysteriously turned into an SEO content mill after the 2016 US Presidential election. Surely that must be a coincidence.
Shortly after the 2016 election, the Washington Post wrote about an organization called PropOrNot, which it described as: “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.” This organization had produced a list of websites it claimed were actual, legit, bonafide Russian propaganda. One of which was … WashingtonsBlog.com.
Now, since publication, the Post issued a correction, “The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet … Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.”
However, Rand Corporation furthered this research from PropOrNot, and ultimately found that WashingtonsBlog, even if it wasn’t actually Russian propaganda, existed in the same sphere as a lot of those websites. While some still operate today, many of them went dormant shortly after Trump’s victory in 2016. How interesting!
If you’re curious, you can read archived versions of both of those blogs here and here. While there’s some interesting information in there, neither have any evidence or proof of Eglin-based social media manipulation on Reddit. They both point to … the same blog post and the same arxiv journal article. A bit of a snake eating its tail.
All of which leads us back to Eglin Air Force Base. Why did it show up as the most reddit addicted city? Well, let’s hear from actual people at Eglin Air Force Base:
Eglin isn’t a bad place to be stationed. The big thing that ruined it for me was the unit. However, there are very limited amenities in the area. So if you don’t like going to the beach, bars and boating all the time, it’s pretty easy to get burnt out in the area. The closest “major” venues are over in Pensacola, which aren’t that major, so don’t expect any big concerts to be “local” or often. No major sports in the area. No major theaters to see plays. No major city amenities. There just isn’t a lot to do there, especially if you’re used to big city living. Destin isn’t bad, but unless you either live there, or in Niceville, it can be a major pain in the butt to go down 98 to get there.
So, it’s kinda boring?
I’m by no means saying Eglin is bad; personally, I enjoyed it and would go back. I do see why some say there’s nothing to do though
And, most damningly:
It’s a story as old as the Air Force, always someone that stays in their dorm and never gets out anywhere claiming “there’s nothing to do.”
That’s right, everyone: Air Force personnel are just like you and me. Instead of going outside and touching grass, they like staying inside and browsing Reddit.
I have no doubt that there’s social media manipulation that goes on daily. I have no doubt that governments, including the US, are up to all sorts of things. But this specific claim that there is a massive Reddit troll farm at Eglin Air Force base, and that it’s designed to disrupt the investigation of these two videos, simply has no evidence to support it.
If you want to take the most conspiratorial view of the lone piece of evidence, the journal article, the most likely candidates for being Eglin shills would be popular, leader figures in the community who share opinions with the plurality of users here and can nudge them in one direction or another. Getting downvotes and dogpiled probably wouldn’t help that. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions there.
But for me, there is a stunning lack of evidence considering how often this claim is repeated. Just be aware that, when you do, you’re demonstrating that you are, in fact, subject to potential manipulation because you are repeating the claims of network influencers who you agree with, without doing any due diligence of your own.
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