Reputation system and elected or at least transparent moderation is what's needed to curb any bad actors. In fact, identity verification would make it easier for spammers, just buy stolen identities in bulk in darknet for a few dollars and fire away. Facebook supposedly leans very hard into real identities and the end result is a dead wasteland of bots talking to bots. And on the other hand, there are plenty of regular forums with not a sign of bad actors, because they were collectively exterminated and the newcomers are vetted.

"If identity verification is what it takes to curb russian trolls, then be it."

It's far from being just Russian. China (wumao/50 centers) and the west have armies of them. The latter was out in force during the Covid business making sure everyone agreed.

In all three cases, we are talking about government agents (human or otherwise) who are the least likely to be affected by identity verification. They can come in by the back door.

That's just throwing the baby out with the bath water. In my experience, the best kind of online interactions are those where people don't have to be limited by what their offline ID is.