I think you need some moderation technique for any community - mores are not inherent in a society, they are formed through dialogue and enforcement. Digital communities are not immune to this dynamic. The digital tools could help you enforce rules more efficiently but someone still has to formulate the rules and adjudicate tricky situations.

The good thing is that the prior experience of lesser-known and more-famous online communities/media outlets has given the next entrant in this space plenty of accumulated wisdom to capitalize on.

Paywalls are part of the solution but they can't be the only one because there's always the tradeoff there between making the cost high enough to weed out the majority of bots and fly-by-night spammers, but also low enough that it's not a significant barrier to entry for community growth.