Reddit says it has 330 million monthly active users (source). Media outlets like CNBC and Variety trust those numbers so I'll consider them good enough for this project. I downloaded the full monthly datasets for posts and comments from the ever-amazing pushshift.io and used R to count how many distinct users make at least one submission or comment in a typical month. I found posts and comments from 6.4 million users. That means more than 98% of Reddit's monthly active users don't make a single post or comment over the course of a typical month. I made the viz in Illustrator.
I rarely comment because of my fear of backlash. The only serious comment I ever made was misunderstood and misconstrued and I was quickly being told I was a ducking idiot and I should die. I learned my lesson that day.
![image showing Let's hear it for the lurkers! The vast majority of Reddit users don't post or comment. [OC]](31323f25-002b-5efb-a7d5-f74c8f12b0dc.jpg)
TrueBirch on March 25th, 2019 at 19:42 UTC »
Reddit says it has 330 million monthly active users (source). Media outlets like CNBC and Variety trust those numbers so I'll consider them good enough for this project. I downloaded the full monthly datasets for posts and comments from the ever-amazing pushshift.io and used R to count how many distinct users make at least one submission or comment in a typical month. I found posts and comments from 6.4 million users. That means more than 98% of Reddit's monthly active users don't make a single post or comment over the course of a typical month. I made the viz in Illustrator.
joshleonardnh on March 25th, 2019 at 21:11 UTC »
I rarely comment because of my fear of backlash. The only serious comment I ever made was misunderstood and misconstrued and I was quickly being told I was a ducking idiot and I should die. I learned my lesson that day.
Stegoserious on March 25th, 2019 at 22:37 UTC »
I'm probably in the top 5% of longest lurkers who are also daily users.
Love the conversations on Reddit and love the content. Just never really feel like my input is a value add to the conversation. And I'm ok with that.
This is my first post and nobody will see it. And that's ok with me.