Well of course, I was only responding to the point about whether the website made any money without advertising.

Given that the technology is solved, and the financing is solved, I wish there were a way to build such a website with such a community without the cycle always ending in its destruction for the sake of profit.

To be clear, it costs real money for regular people to give Reddit gold, but Reddit admins can do it for free. So it's a very strong signal from everyone but them, but just as meaningless as an upvote from them.

Good to keep in mind for the large subreddits and to put a grain on salt on those approximations, but even the subreddits hated by the admins show years-worth of purchases, it's also not likely to be prevalent in those like /r/aww where it's exclusively pictures of pets.