Current breakdown at the time of this post sorted by the number of monthly active users:
- lemmy.world: 101,013 total users / 27,472 active users
- lemmy.ml: 41,972 total users / 4,905 active users
- beehaw.org: 12,270 total users / 4,178 active users
- sh.itjust.works: 17,509 total users / 3,381 active users
- feddit.de: 8,675 total users / 2,935 active users
- lemm.ee: 10,348 total users / 2,751 active users
- lemmynsfw.com: 22,967 total users / 2,310 active users
- lemmy.fmhy.ml: 8,777 total users / 1,704 active users
- lemmy.ca: 5,072 total users / 1,656 active users
- programming.dev: 5,058 total users / 1,242 active users
If you only include active last month, we are are at about 70k active users. Active meaning posted or commented.
If you assume 90% are lurking and not active, then that value can be as high as 700k. But likely 2M is off target.
90-9-1 rule says that you may in fact be correct.
90% are probably lurkers. But there is a good argument to be made that a lot of the recent growth is from the 9% of contributors on Reddit, and some of the 1% also.
Currently I suspect that much less than 90% here are lurkers, but that should balance out over time just due to how social communities work.
You’re likely correct on all of your assumptions, in my opinion :)