@Odo

So going to that instance, and going to its list of federated communities (https://parapheum.com/communities/listing_type/All/page/1) shows a few sizeable ones. Also note the instance's description (see https://parapheum.com/) which is basically to distribute the server load without any commitment to any particular kind of community.

So, could be full of lurkers, or parallel accounts created to avoid server overload that will be soon dropped. So probably some bloat in these numbers, as there are for other platforms too