Defense Builds Its Own Reddit

The Defense Department is planning to launch a Reddit-like platform where service members can post new ideas and vote them up or down, according to a Defense News report.

The new tool, Eureka, will be part of the military’s suite of social media mirroring sites including miBook and miTube, which mimic Facebook and YouTube respectively, according to the report.

“The idea is to host discussions that lead to revolutionary solutions; for example, improved training, better ways to secure mobile devices, or any other problems that plague the military and hamper efficiency,” Defense News reported.

The project is an interesting contrast to the State Department’s Sounding Board, which encourages users to start with problems rather than solutions and then engage in a dialogue about how to fix them. If a clear, workable solution emerges in a Sounding Board debate, State leadership might swoop in and implement the fix, officials have said. If there’s no clear fix, they figure the dialogue will at least give users a few new ideas about workarounds and let them blow off steam in a constructive environment.

The Defense system, by contrast, starts with solutions rather than problems and, in the Defense News piece at least, officials are talking more about the next big idea that might emerge than about finally solving those thorny old inefficiencies. Presumably there won’t be a function to comment on ideas -- just to vote them up or down -- which should dissuade some of the most virulent complaints.

Social media tends to take on a life of its own once launched, though. It will be interesting to see how many posts on Eureka are new ideas and how many are old gripes.