I know your heart is in the right place man, and I like what you're trying to create, but I think there might be a flaw in the business plan and that's a certain confidence in people's taste. I don't want to sound like I lost hope in humanity but there's shit tons of track records that prove that good contents does not guarantee popularity. Look at the music charts. Look at instagram and FB, how many times has a silly cat pic outpopulared a post with good content?
Like I said, I don't want to come across pessimistic, I'm just saying don't put too much trust into common sense and fairness, because we live in crazy times in which people are over stimulated with information. And I can speak from experience when I say that sometimes one is just too exhausted to dig into something that requires too much attention or thinking, so in a spur of mental incapacitation one can absolutely upvote a stupid cat pic over really good contents. So when you write your algorithms how do you compensate for that? Trivial shit is more popular in general than something meaningful, and that is what good authors are always struggling with, because it's unfair to them. Your up against the human factor, the sheopleness of the masse. Good luck my friend because you're gonna have your hands full.