As much as people get outraged by the content, there is no doubting that Reddit has done well for itself due to its radically permissive policies up until now.
/r/ShitRedditSays has really called into question exactly what "free speech" means. Its like "downvote brigades" are anything new these days. Does anybody remember "message board invasions"???
Its fine to say whatever you like, except you have no right to assemble a downvote brigade. Which is speech. You have complete free speech, except you aren't allowed to make /r/picsofdeadkids, /r/HurtingAnimals, or /r/rapingwomen. Even then, the Reddit owners are looking for a way to cut back on the downvote brigades, which really is the "invasion" problem that has always been eternal on these forums.
There is _always_ a limit to free speech. And when a community figures out exactly what that limit is, then the "free speech" nutters leave. I dunno, maybe they'll leave for 8chan or some "more free" place. Whether or not that causes death for the site... its a question.
The Gamefaqs LUEsers were neutered because of message board invasions, as well as the "shock sites" of Goatse and Tubgirl. Reddit is "free-er" and seems to be accepting of internet shock humor like Goatse and Tubgirl (As well as grossly / weirdly pornographic material like /r/clopclop). But there will be a day when the Reddit admins draw a line and say "No, you aren't allowed to talk about that here".
This is particularly true when you consider that NSFW sub-reddits almost never make it to the front page, where the presence of offensive content could threaten traffic.
But that's all just idle thinking with no code to back it up.
So like Usenet, then.
Few news servers carries every Usenet group. No news server carries every newsgroup, because many of them are private, on private NNTP servers. It's decentralised: Anyone can run a NNTP server, and each NNTP server can take feeds of whatever subset they want, and add whatever additional groups they want for local use, or for distribution.
It has ownership through moderation, though there are certainly weaknesses there in the level of reliance on trust.
And the peering could do with some level of automation.
IIRC, there was an interesting study of decentralising git, that suggested an application of bitcoin's system for deciding who "owned" a name.
EDIT: Downvotes. Yall feeling a bit salty? Look, unmoderated "free" discussions exist on the internet in many places. I'm an internet "veteran", I've seen over the years the rise and fall of moderated and unmoderated social networks starting back at Usenet.
Between there and now, there have been an "Exodus" from GameFAQs (LUEsers), Digg, Something Awful, Slashdot and more as each of these communities grew. The "free speech" guys always find another place to take their discussions, and the previous communities usually begin to shrink to some degree.
Reddit is simply going through the _same_ stages. The free speech argument comes up, toxic is spewed forth to test exactly how far the mods / owners are willing to let things go... some back and forth happens and eventually, the "free speech" guys are going to form a new community elsewhere and Reddit's role on the internet will solidify.
Its how it happens. Its how it _always_ happens.