[devinhelton]

Anything that makes the user invest a bit in the reputation of their account before they are allowed to message strangers would do the trick. Charge $10 for signing up. Limit @-mentions until you have built up a small following and activity track record. Require an application to join the forum. Etc, etc.

If a cost is evenly moderately costly to create, and abusive comments quickly result in bans, then the ratio of abusers quickly goes down to a very low level.

The problem is that making it costly to sign up goes against the business model and growth model of sites like Twitter, Reddit, or Instagram.

[jfim]

> Charge $10 for signing up.

The problem is that it makes it hard to get enough of a critical mass to convince people that it's worth the ten bucks.

That being said, something awful did it well over a decade ago [1] and has a relatively low amount of assholes/harassment, but it's not zero.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful#Forums