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Those same stats are true for EVERY social media platform. Twitter is not the exception here. What percentage of Reddit users do you think comment on a post? Wh

Those same stats are true for EVERY social media platform. Twitter is not the exception here. What percentage of Reddit users do you think comment on a post? What percentage of hacker news readers submit new posts or write comments? Instagram content consumers vs producers? Most people are followers and that’s ok. You can get off your soap box now.

thisistheend123 5y ago
- genghisjahn 5y ago
  Have a look at the references listed in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule#:~:text=2%20Participation%20inequality-,Definition,forum%20but%20do%20not%20post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule#:~:text=2%20Particip....
- idlewords 5y ago
  Google "Pareto principle" for infinite examples.
- jlmorton 5y ago
  There is a widely-known Internet rule of thumb that 1% of users add content, and 99% lurk. There have been several studies that seek to validate that, several of which are outlined in the Wiki summary: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
  - vrc 5y ago
    I always have heard the 90-9-1 rule. 90 lurk, 9 interact, 1 create. Not sure where I heard that though.
- cbg0 5y ago
  More than 98% of Reddit users don't post or comment on posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/lets_hear_it_for_the_lurkers_the_vast_majority_of/ejd1gtk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/let...
  - andrewstuart2 5y ago
    After the last few days I more and more strongly suspect that's because of a few events like r/place where it becomes incentivized to have many accounts per real user.
- alophawen 5y ago
  It's a well known approximation, called the 1% rule. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/jul/20/guardianweeklytechnologysection2 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/jul/20/guardianw...
- cm2012 5y ago
  People are downvoting you since this is considered common knowledge on HN, and you come across as a bit combative.
  - cbg0 5y ago
    The "Way to go HN. Typical civilized people living in the comfort bubbles in West." is also definitely not helping him.
im3w1l 5y ago
Except 1-on-1 chat apps. Which is a strong point in their favor.
- MrJohz 5y ago
  I suspect even there that's true. I text very rarely, even with my closest friends. My wife texts people much more, and I have some friends who text constantly. There's clearly some sort of differential there, and I wouldn't be surprised if it roughly follows a similar sort of 80/20 rule.
snek_case 5y ago
There's at least two key differences between something like Reddit or HN and Twitter. The Twitter platform is structured so that a large mass of people will "follow" a few influencers. It creates a really asymmetric power dynamic. On Reddit and HN, if you have interesting content, you can make the front page. On Twitter, your odds are much bigger if you're famous, and every comment a famous person makes is hugely amplified. The second difference is that Reddit and HN are organized by topic. HN only has a single topic, but there's moderators to enforce that posts be somewhat on topic and retain a certain minimum of civility. Twitter is not organized like that. Even if you're just interested in programming, Twitter will try to get you to engage in political topics, and if you do engage, you might get responses from random people Twitter also pulled from other discussions who have very little context, and you'll get to exchange with this random set of people through responses that are limited in length. If a famous person happens to strongly disagree with you on Twitter, their hordes of fans will start to attack you. So yes, all social media platforms have more active and influential users[0] , but no, these platforms are not all the same, and a lot of the difference is structural. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  tl;dr "The medium is the message" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
- ngngngng 5y ago
  > It creates a really asymmetric power dynamic. This is a big reason I can't stand the culture of twitter. When I interact with someone on Reddit, the two of us are on equal footing. There are many other strange Reddit specific cultural details to keep in mind when commenting, but the two of us are just two mostly equal users. I once disagreed with someone on twitter that I didn't realize had a huge following and was easily upset. They retweeted my response and called on their tens of thousands of followers to back them up in our disagreement. I deleted twitter that day.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
dimitrios1 5y ago
If you think other social media is toxic and stifles speech in the same way Twitter does, you are intentionally being dishonest, have your head in the sand, or simply have little understanding of how these platforms work (I'm going with the latter based on your characterization of reddit alone). - Reddit has endless communities, and long text forum posts and comments. Most people lurk in the top subs, but almost everyone has a niche subreddit they have actively posted in, or has an alt just for that purpose - I find it hard pressed to find someone who purposefully creates an Instagram account and does not, at the very minimum, share photos with friends and family. I use the app daily, and even the boomers that are finally coming onto the platform regularly post photos. Most people are followers in the broad sense, but on a community level, especially with their friends, families, and communities, are sharers. That's the difference between twitter versus facebook, instagram, and reddit. You are making the fallacy of applying the influencer syndrome across the entire platform. The majority of users are not remaining on the platform because of influencers. These other platforms are primarily about individuals communities and friends. They start by joining the platform because of a friend, a family member, or to join a niche community of likeminded folk, and then they are gradually exposed to the platform-specific SEO junk food. Twitter on the other hand, is demonstrably, provably, about certain power users. It's about following the "right" people to get the most out of it. There is no community in the organic sense of the term on twitter, except by pure happenstance ("tech twitter", "black twitter", and so on, but even then it's at best, a loose association). So before you tell someone to get off their soap box, maybe make sure you have a clearer understanding.
- nr2x 5y ago
  Reddit also has perennial problems with jailbait, fappening, and the like. Instagram is the social app of choice for celebrities and influencers. It’s all garbage or gold depending on how you self curate, this is true of all platforms going back to BBS.
- andreilys 5y ago
  Reddit has endless communities Endless communities yet the top ones are run by a tiny percentage of power-mods who have outsized influence (Six power mods control 118 of the top 500 subreddits [1]) [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/gkkfg5/updated_and_sanitized_six_powermods_control_118/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/gkkfg5/upda...
memish 5y ago
That's right. Twitter has problems, but that's not one of them. What are the problems? 1. It has a free speech problem. The defacto public town square doesn't believe in free speech! 2. It has a political problem. Twitter bends the knee to the loudest activists and is sympathetic to a specific political party. The town square has been captured by a political party. It doesn't matter which one because being captured by any party is a problem. The town square must be neutral. Free and open debate is paramount for society to progress. 3. It has an anger problem. Twitter rewards anger and fear. 4. It has a transparency problem. How does the algo work? Who are they shadowbanning and downranking and why? What topics do they remove on trending? Which do they boost? What else?
- philjohn 5y ago
  1. Twitter has a terms of service, and advertisers don't want their adverts next to hate speech. 2. there are SO MANY right wing people on twitter, tweeting away merrily. They adhere to the Terms of Service. 3. Once again, I mostly see that coming from accounts with a certain political bent 4. Fair
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >Twitter has a terms of service, and advertisers don't want their adverts next to hate speech Why? Does an ad get contaminated by association? Or it's a minority who gets to call what's "hate speech" and what's not, and pushes advertisers to not want to risk this (who wouldn't give a fuck otherwise)?
    - gumby 5y ago
      > Does an ad get contaminated by association? People buying ads certainly think so. Or more specifically they think their brand or product denoted in the ad will be associated with the context in which it appears. And they are the customers.
  - kgonza 5y ago
    And 3 is almost always conspiracy bs. They are "shadowbanned" but their tweets somehow get high engagement. It bs political complaints.
coldtea 5y ago
>Those same stats are true for EVERY social media platform. Not on Facebook, for one. >You can get off your soap box now. Why the uncalled for tone?
fleddr 5y ago
I'll stay on my soap box for a little longer. The statistics are important for their implications. We're talking about these platforms in relation to "free speech". This implies it's used by the masses for speech, but that isn't the case. We also call it our "digital town square". It isn't. The square is empty and has a handful of people with a megaphone. Politicians, media and businesses consider the narratives on social media to reflect actual culture and political views, but this couldn't be further from the truth. This matters because Twitter has an outsized cultural and political influence, which is not the case for all the other networks you mentioned.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > The square is empty and has a handful of people with a megaphone. Have you ever been to a real town square? Its a handful of people with Megaphones trying to rally a crowd - and a bunch of people having private conversations around it. Thats twitter + DMs.
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
It’s not true on Reddit. Not even close. Reddit has been the only platform of the people, and it is slowly dying.
- HereIGoAgain 5y ago
  "It’s not true on Reddit. Not even close. Reddit has been the only platform of the people, and it is slowly censoring." Fixed.. Even though it's no real difference.
nradov 5y ago
I don't think that's true. On Facebook the majority of active users post some original content at least a few times per year. I've seen a lot of profiles for my own friends and various other users.

thisistheend123 5y ago

genghisjahn 5y ago
Have a look at the references listed in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule#:~:text=2%20Participation%20inequality-,Definition,forum%20but%20do%20not%20post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule#:~:text=2%20Particip....
idlewords 5y ago
Google "Pareto principle" for infinite examples.
jlmorton 5y ago
There is a widely-known Internet rule of thumb that 1% of users add content, and 99% lurk. There have been several studies that seek to validate that, several of which are outlined in the Wiki summary: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
- vrc 5y ago
  I always have heard the 90-9-1 rule. 90 lurk, 9 interact, 1 create. Not sure where I heard that though.
cbg0 5y ago
More than 98% of Reddit users don't post or comment on posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/lets_hear_it_for_the_lurkers_the_vast_majority_of/ejd1gtk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/let...
- andrewstuart2 5y ago
  After the last few days I more and more strongly suspect that's because of a few events like r/place where it becomes incentivized to have many accounts per real user.
alophawen 5y ago
It's a well known approximation, called the 1% rule. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/jul/20/guardianweeklytechnologysection2 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/jul/20/guardianw...
cm2012 5y ago
People are downvoting you since this is considered common knowledge on HN, and you come across as a bit combative.
- cbg0 5y ago
  The "Way to go HN. Typical civilized people living in the comfort bubbles in West." is also definitely not helping him.

im3w1l 5y ago

Except 1-on-1 chat apps. Which is a strong point in their favor.

MrJohz 5y ago
I suspect even there that's true. I text very rarely, even with my closest friends. My wife texts people much more, and I have some friends who text constantly. There's clearly some sort of differential there, and I wouldn't be surprised if it roughly follows a similar sort of 80/20 rule.

snek_case 5y ago

There's at least two key differences between something like Reddit or HN and Twitter. The Twitter platform is structured so that a large mass of people will "follow" a few influencers. It creates a really asymmetric power dynamic. On Reddit and HN, if you have interesting content, you can make the front page. On Twitter, your odds are much bigger if you're famous, and every comment a famous person makes is hugely amplified. The second difference is that Reddit and HN are organized by topic. HN only has a single topic, but there's moderators to enforce that posts be somewhat on topic and retain a certain minimum of civility. Twitter is not organized like that. Even if you're just interested in programming, Twitter will try to get you to engage in political topics, and if you do engage, you might get responses from random people Twitter also pulled from other discussions who have very little context, and you'll get to exchange with this random set of people through responses that are limited in length. If a famous person happens to strongly disagree with you on Twitter, their hordes of fans will start to attack you. So yes, all social media platforms have more active and influential users[0] , but no, these platforms are not all the same, and a lot of the difference is structural. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

kmeisthax 5y ago
tl;dr "The medium is the message" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
ngngngng 5y ago
> It creates a really asymmetric power dynamic. This is a big reason I can't stand the culture of twitter. When I interact with someone on Reddit, the two of us are on equal footing. There are many other strange Reddit specific cultural details to keep in mind when commenting, but the two of us are just two mostly equal users. I once disagreed with someone on twitter that I didn't realize had a huge following and was easily upset. They retweeted my response and called on their tens of thousands of followers to back them up in our disagreement. I deleted twitter that day.
- Jcowell 5y ago

dimitrios1 5y ago

If you think other social media is toxic and stifles speech in the same way Twitter does, you are intentionally being dishonest, have your head in the sand, or simply have little understanding of how these platforms work (I'm going with the latter based on your characterization of reddit alone). - Reddit has endless communities, and long text forum posts and comments. Most people lurk in the top subs, but almost everyone has a niche subreddit they have actively posted in, or has an alt just for that purpose - I find it hard pressed to find someone who purposefully creates an Instagram account and does not, at the very minimum, share photos with friends and family. I use the app daily, and even the boomers that are finally coming onto the platform regularly post photos. Most people are followers in the broad sense, but on a community level, especially with their friends, families, and communities, are sharers. That's the difference between twitter versus facebook, instagram, and reddit. You are making the fallacy of applying the influencer syndrome across the entire platform. The majority of users are not remaining on the platform because of influencers. These other platforms are primarily about individuals communities and friends. They start by joining the platform because of a friend, a family member, or to join a niche community of likeminded folk, and then they are gradually exposed to the platform-specific SEO junk food. Twitter on the other hand, is demonstrably, provably, about certain power users. It's about following the "right" people to get the most out of it. There is no community in the organic sense of the term on twitter, except by pure happenstance ("tech twitter", "black twitter", and so on, but even then it's at best, a loose association). So before you tell someone to get off their soap box, maybe make sure you have a clearer understanding.

nr2x 5y ago
Reddit also has perennial problems with jailbait, fappening, and the like. Instagram is the social app of choice for celebrities and influencers. It’s all garbage or gold depending on how you self curate, this is true of all platforms going back to BBS.
andreilys 5y ago
Reddit has endless communities Endless communities yet the top ones are run by a tiny percentage of power-mods who have outsized influence (Six power mods control 118 of the top 500 subreddits [1]) [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/gkkfg5/updated_and_sanitized_six_powermods_control_118/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/gkkfg5/upda...

memish 5y ago

That's right. Twitter has problems, but that's not one of them. What are the problems? 1. It has a free speech problem. The defacto public town square doesn't believe in free speech! 2. It has a political problem. Twitter bends the knee to the loudest activists and is sympathetic to a specific political party. The town square has been captured by a political party. It doesn't matter which one because being captured by any party is a problem. The town square must be neutral. Free and open debate is paramount for society to progress. 3. It has an anger problem. Twitter rewards anger and fear. 4. It has a transparency problem. How does the algo work? Who are they shadowbanning and downranking and why? What topics do they remove on trending? Which do they boost? What else?

philjohn 5y ago
1. Twitter has a terms of service, and advertisers don't want their adverts next to hate speech. 2. there are SO MANY right wing people on twitter, tweeting away merrily. They adhere to the Terms of Service. 3. Once again, I mostly see that coming from accounts with a certain political bent 4. Fair
- coldtea 5y ago
  >Twitter has a terms of service, and advertisers don't want their adverts next to hate speech Why? Does an ad get contaminated by association? Or it's a minority who gets to call what's "hate speech" and what's not, and pushes advertisers to not want to risk this (who wouldn't give a fuck otherwise)?
  - gumby 5y ago
    > Does an ad get contaminated by association? People buying ads certainly think so. Or more specifically they think their brand or product denoted in the ad will be associated with the context in which it appears. And they are the customers.
- kgonza 5y ago
  And 3 is almost always conspiracy bs. They are "shadowbanned" but their tweets somehow get high engagement. It bs political complaints.

coldtea 5y ago

>Those same stats are true for EVERY social media platform. Not on Facebook, for one. >You can get off your soap box now. Why the uncalled for tone?

fleddr 5y ago

I'll stay on my soap box for a little longer. The statistics are important for their implications. We're talking about these platforms in relation to "free speech". This implies it's used by the masses for speech, but that isn't the case. We also call it our "digital town square". It isn't. The square is empty and has a handful of people with a megaphone. Politicians, media and businesses consider the narratives on social media to reflect actual culture and political views, but this couldn't be further from the truth. This matters because Twitter has an outsized cultural and political influence, which is not the case for all the other networks you mentioned.

vineyardmike 5y ago
> The square is empty and has a handful of people with a megaphone. Have you ever been to a real town square? Its a handful of people with Megaphones trying to rally a crowd - and a bunch of people having private conversations around it. Thats twitter + DMs.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago

It’s not true on Reddit. Not even close. Reddit has been the only platform of the people, and it is slowly dying.

HereIGoAgain 5y ago
"It’s not true on Reddit. Not even close. Reddit has been the only platform of the people, and it is slowly censoring." Fixed.. Even though it's no real difference.

nradov 5y ago

I don't think that's true. On Facebook the majority of active users post some original content at least a few times per year. I've seen a lot of profiles for my own friends and various other users.