We run a reddit alternative/competitor at http://snapzu.com and we've been mentioned a few times recently in reddit threads mentioning the whole Ellen Pao censoring debacle.
As you can imagine, it's actually quite tough getting a community off the ground, but we managed to get just under 10,000 members in around 2 years, and it's just speeding up as demand goes up and as word spreads of an alternative to go to.
The problem reddit is having is that they grew up (over 10 years) as a free-speech platform, and just recently changed their policy that promotes "safe places", essentially censoring any free-speech that they consider "harassment". This is literally a licence to be able to mute (shadow ban) anyone that steps up against them. People are getting really fed up. It's actually quite interesting to see how all of this unfolds.
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 ;)
I cannot find a way to reply to the first portion of your comment because I cannot speak for our current users and what their individual interests are. Everyone is provided the same tools to use and they use them as they best seem fit.
I do understand your point though. One of the highest of our priorities is to continue developing ways to discourage crappy/lazy/junk content from being posted and voted on. And that's why were trying our best and actively listening to feedback like the one you just provided.
Thanks for the feedback! We've already played around a LOT with those and there's not much we can do about that. The point of the tiles it to show popularity (more popular = bigger).
If you don't like the grid view, you can always switch to the list view (which actually has more sifting functionality) by clicking on the tab near the top.