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

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

  • NewLeafDawn@lemmy.world
    3·
    44 minutes ago

    Yup, I was a top commenter on many subs and even moderated a few. It was a daily part of my life. After getting 2 (unfounded) complete bans for 3 days then 7 days inside a two week period, I was out. I deleted a decade and a half of thoughts and opinions and exchanges that meant something to me because FUCK NAZIS.

  • ALF839@piefed.socialEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    Last year Reddit became super aggressive with bans. My first ever ban was for talking about how to kill fish humanely after catching them. I was banned for 3 days for inciting violence and my appeal was ignored.

    • pkjqpg1h@lemmy.zipOP
      6·
      1 day ago

      how to kill fish humanely after catching them

      looks like reddit using LLMs to ban people I guess

  • Oyu F'ka@mander.xyz
    7·
    2 days ago

    I’m one of those people! A victim of the zionist trolls that prowl there.

    I was in the 1% top commenters on r/palestine, and out of the blue I am informed I had a lifetime ban for an old comment that I"m still not sure I made…they wouldn’t respond to my messages or even allow me to see the comment, so I eventually gave up, deleted my account, and here I am, lol! (Although I’m mostly on mastodon 🙂).

    Edit: I don’t think my example really accounts for the lost accounts - just a guess, but I think you’ll find that a lot of active redditors left reddit, (about 3-4 years back…maybe more, maybe less…there’s probably a lot of them on here 🤔), in protest about their ‘updating’ of the format, with much more ‘in your face’ advertising, in an attempt to convert it into a social media platform.

    • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      9 hours ago

      I got told i was upvoting banned content. That was a kick in the pants! Got me off reddit quick.

    • Artwork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I am sorry…
      To support the case, I moved when got shadow-banned and never received any response:
      - https://lemmy.world/post/41927576/21676673

      Yet, Lemmy is sure a place, too… where you may get inhumanly banned just like a biomass, too… For example, relatively recently, I was banned on some Community for literally odd reason, and never got any response from their moderators in 2 private messages I sent regarding it:
      - https://lemmy.world/modlog…

      Image previews

      The ban record (I did absolutely nothing suspicious, I believe, and the account is months old):

      The private messages preview:

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
    5·
    2 days ago

    They may not have chosen to leave, over the years I’ve occasionally encountered people who had a strategy of deleting their account and starting a new one every once in a while to get rid of old baggage and trackability. There’s no way to determine the percentage doing that without internal Reddit data, I assume.

  • Auster@thebrainbin.org
    4·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • pkjqpg1h@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      And I can’t help but wonder how many people that never comment but are always there decided to drop as well.

      sorry, thats not something that I can access :D

      • lemmylump@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 days ago

        That what I thought. Something I recently found out that hidden account posts and comments are not actually hidden. All you have to do is in the account pull up search type and empty space and click search and every post or comment is revealed.

        Reddit is shady AF now. Glad I stopped using it.