In spite of its prevalence in online social media platforms, there have been very few studies of passive participation. The current study uses interviews to understand the motivations for passive participation in online communities of the Israeli Ministry of Social Services. In addition to the motivations commonly found when not participating “more actively”, such as concerns of criticism, lack of need, lack of motivation and technological concerns, users stated two additional and secondary reasons for not contributing content in the communities: concern that their posts would not be addressed (i.e. lack of reciprocation), and reasons relating to the graphical interface of the communities