One chef's-knife brand gets 31% of its Reddit recommendations from 5% of accounts

Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests

A data analysis of six knife subreddits found that 49 accounts — the top 5% by brand-heaviness — wrote 11.3% of brand mentions in buying threads, versus 7.9% expected by chance. The concentration is strongest for a chef's-knife brand that received 31.2% of its buying-thread mentions from this tail. However, full Reddit histories of 23 tail accounts look ordinary: they are 4.5 years old, post across 66 subreddits, and name seven knife brands, not one. The author notes the data cannot distinguish paid campaigns from loud fan bases.