Sometimes I find old Reddit posts on search engines, and when I look at them the top commenter's account is deleted. This has happened many times, and I was curious about the general statistics of this.
I made a small analysis of Reddit.
I searched some random words with top posts: "minecraft, people, help, science, google, amazon, funny, colorful."
I didn't just choose the top one; I chose 10 old posts and summed up the total users in comments (top posts hierarchically).
data
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https://reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/jijwhs/i_made_another_cyberpunk_scene_in_minecraft/ 194 users, 34 deleted, 17.5%
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https://reddit.com/r/movies/comments/62sjuh/the_senate_upvote_this_so_that_people_see_it_when/ 201 users, 50 deleted, 24.8%
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https://reddit.com/r/blog/comments/6mtgtp/we_need_your_voice_as_we_continue_the_fight_for/ 205 user 57 deleted, 27.8%
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https://reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/16iti27/for_science/ 154 users, 35 deleted, 22.7%
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https://reddit.com/r/memes/comments/ig9u4z/she_did_her_best_ok/ 201 users, 41 deleted, 20.3%
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https://reddit.com/r/news/comments/jptqj9/joe_biden_elected_president_of_the_united_states/ 202 users, 48 deleted, 23.7%
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https://reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/15emk8z/he_saw_someone_needed_help_and_stepped_in_to_help/ 184 users, 41 deleted, 22.2%
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https://reddit.com/r/funny/comments/q1a7iu/zuckerberg_right_now/ 202 users, 37 deleted, 18.3%
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https://reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/rmqa2a/this_is_an_amazing_idea/ 202 users, 47 deleted, 23.2%
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https://reddit.com/r/PraiseTheCameraMan/comments/ekud8e/right_after_ricky_gervais_talks_about_how_the/ 201 users, 61 deleted, 30.3%
Results;
total 1,947 users, 451 deleted, 23.1%
btw this is for users who deleted their accounts; maybe there are many more abandoned
this is just a small research I did; the real stats may be higher or lower - I don't know
So at least in my research, 23% of top commentator Reddit users chose to delete their accounts; some of them also deleted their comments, and some obfuscated their comments (to poison LLMs)
But 23% of top commentors is a really big number. These guys made Reddit the Reddit, but they chose to leave
Even on the lower end, 17,5% is still a lot. And I can't help but wonder how many people that never comment but are always there decided to drop as well.
If anything, considering Reddit seemingly at damage control mode and their opaque numbers, I wouldn't doubt they lost far more people than they'd be willing to show.
sorry, thats not something that I can access :D
I was just conjecturing. e.e"