I saw a suggestion on Reddit where with each million users, the headlines get even more distorted, that there be a karma penalty for distorting the headline. I think that could work if it was on a per subreddit basis.
Reddit can manage the volume if they get rid of the legacy media content. I don't see that happening with Conde Nast running the show though. Subreddits aren't as diluted by corporate content as /politics or /worldnews are, but reddit is kinda like the yahoo of news: lots of categories and that doesn't scale so well as we all know now.
Between corporate content, categories and so many human moderators it is going to be a battle as a viable business. My ad testing also showed a non-trivial percentage of their audience and traffic is <14 y/o.
