We have (and try to keep improving) an intelligent system that prevents "brigading" by limiting the amount of power from individual sources (such as someones followers) that would otherwise give a huge and unfair advantage. We aim to have the social features as a secondary companion to naturally shared content (only used as tiebreakers, etc). This means that a user with 5000 followers will have little advantage to a user with 5 followers. The same goes for the prevention of too many image/video/gif snaps beating out quality written articles on our front page, which may take a considerably longer time to consume and longer to vote on.

There will always be obstacles and problems when trying to pave a new direction, but that's the best part. It's what keeps us going ;)