The issue is that {total available revenue}<<{cost of curation time} for most niche search space. It's the Consumer Reports problem: if people need your service

The issue is that {total available revenue}<<{cost of curation time} for most niche search space. It's the Consumer Reports problem: if people need your service rarely, and it's only worth a modest amount of money, then it's impossible to balance the books. And we're just talking different flavors of Ponzi schemes if we're trying to design a system where available revenue doesn't cover costs. I remember pre-Google, when it was an open question as to whether curated directories or search engines would be the dominant form. Turns out, the former when signal>>noise (early web) and the latter when signal<<noise (current web). Reddit is a gamified answer to a fundamental imbalancing of profit: convince people to do valuable work for free, pay them in karma/gold stars/Monopoly money, and then sell that work (without having to pay its fair market value). And for profitable search curation niches, there are already solutions. F.ex. Bloomberg makes $10B of revenue off one.