You are correct, I need to learn how to read...
Users provide the Air Planes in the air, the flight numbers, type of aircraft, etc...Flightawre might supplement that information from other sources, but users are providing the bulk of what you see on Flightaware maps...
Flightaware gives each user a very detail statistical page of the information they have provided, just as I type this response, my statistics page is saying I am currently providing information on 20 flights you see on the Flightaware Maps....I’m just one of literally thousands of individual users...
Just to give you a feel for how much information is actually collected...
Yesterday on Saturday, I monitored 2196 aircraft and gathered 212,952 positions from those aircraft approximately 100 positions per plane....
The #1 person in my area monitored 2624 planes and gathered 536,353 positions from those aircraft, he’s got a better antenna that is higher in the air......so he’s picking up more planes further away and tracking them for longer periods of time....
That’s just 2 users of literally hundreds of thousands users around the USA and World.