I spent some time looking at this. I cant find the source but things appear to point to the pirate browser from the pirate bay. As mentioned on the tor-talk mailinglist the pirate bay website is a high ranking site and on the 10th of august the linked from one of the 10 or so links under the search to the pirate browser. archive.org cache shows this clearly. So why didnt the uptick happen until the 19th. I cant explain. Twitter conversations increased around the 16th. News articles seem constant from the 10th onward.
initially i assumed a conspiracy to flood the network or conduct research when I read about abnormal spikes for india and brazil but actually looking at the graphs the huge spikes are across most nations.
for reference i checked the source code for the graphs page and how the data is compiled and the only data available for user count is country so at the moment there is no way to do pattern analysis for tor version or the like to definitively point to the pirate browser.
initially i assumed a conspiracy to flood the network or conduct research when I read about abnormal spikes for india and brazil but actually looking at the graphs the huge spikes are across most nations.
for reference i checked the source code for the graphs page and how the data is compiled and the only data available for user count is country so at the moment there is no way to do pattern analysis for tor version or the like to definitively point to the pirate browser.