At this point I'm still not clear on the need to even reward such behavior as posting a link or meme, but is it possible to create a token that is used within your front-end platform, like what we see with a lot of other projects?

Separating out the content from the rewards process for the moment, one of the things I appreciate about things like Reddit, Hacker News, and Digg before them, is introducing me to interesting things that I hadn't seen yet AND the comments/analysis in the discussion. Recently I saw a headline in numerous periodicals that "science has proven there is no base reality" only to find in the comments on HN that the science was flawed plus the headlines were misleading, and why.

Now on the rewards, seeing as this would need to be a new front-end, there is the possibility of moderation controls, filtering etc. Also, just like Reddit, low-quality material would hopefully be downvoted or ignored, with the best rising to the top or surfaced to a specific feed.

Even Reddit has rewards now over and above kudos, you just can't spend it outside of Reddit.