
Back in 2000, Time-Warner decided to purchase AOL. AOL had spent the last 5 years bleeding (dial-up) customers to their main competitors… anything that wasn’t dial-up.
Time-Warner hailed the “merger” as the Deal of the Century.
Later, Time-Warner admitted, “We didn’t realize that all those customers we thought we had purchased could simply leave.”

In the early days it seems pike Stack Overflow tried to regulate engagement from trolls. They encouraged support for dumb/newbie questions and discouraged obnoxious behaviors.
I’m guessing that’s just a losing battle. I don’t think there’s much hope of keeping a good moderator for free. It’s a tough, thankless job. Troll/poor moderators are free.