Directly connecting Tor users went from 2.5 million to 4 million in 3 months, and no one has mentioned it yet over at the Tor Project?
Most of it comes from Germany:
And France:
And the Netherlands:
And Indonesia:
(There are probably more outside the Top 10 relay users by country, but you get the idea where the bulk of the growth comes from)
This just doesn’t happen under normal circumstances - except directly after the Snowden disclosures - and there isn’t any particular reason why Germany, France, Netherlands, Indonesia etc should have this abnormal growth in such a short period, and in unison.
This definitely suggests some sort of collusion by these nation states. If it’s a natural event, then I’ll install Windows 10 with full telemetry, use Google as my home page, open a Facebook account with 100 personal photos, and prefer Skype for intimate conversations. 
Highly suspect and I wonder whether this is some new form of attack to try and exhaust network resources or similar? The Tor network runs at about half its advertised bandwidth right now, so I guess that goal is feasible for advanced adversaries.
This is screaming out for the Tor Blog to discuss it…
