[Melatonic]

Never thought of this until now but what if you had some kind of pay system that worked more like an escrow-ish service ?

So initially you have to pay some small sum. Eventually sometime not too long after (Hours? Days?) your money is returned to you. Make it pricey enough to deter large bot spam (some will of course still pay for single bots) and cheap enough to be affordable for most.

Like putting a quarter in a shopping cart !

[Terr_]

I want to see a vending-machines in City Hall or Post Offices etc., where you can give $1-5 to a charity of your choice and receive an anonymous "Probably Human or at least has Metaphorical Skin In The Game" token. The token can be spent/burned with any online service to create/upgrade an account.

I'm skipping over many details about privacy and security and anti-resale, but basically it means that the service can extend trust in moderation, since you (A) have something to lose and (B) making lots of accounts has lots of physical friction.

[Melatonic]

Not a bad idea. Couid be cheap I would guess since it requires physically going

[windward]

This is similar to X's model, where every reply section is full of bluetick OF bots.

Cheap enough for humans and too expensive for bots have a big overlap.