Moderation certainly got poorer once Hearst took over the site. There was or still is some form of trolling, however even when they did the debit card checks, there were still multiple accounts from the same people.
Forums attract trolls like moths to a light. No matter what you do to try and lock them down, a troll will come. It may take weeks or months before they kick off so you most definitely won't spot them from the off. Sadly it's what happens when you have forums that are open to anybody to register on - and the troll is the one person who has to spoil it for everybody else.
There's a post on DS (not sure if it can be believed), but it's claimed Hurst tried to sell the AVForums advertising space to direct DS users to migrate to AV, AV said no thanks.
This was apparently confirmed by a long standing member of DS who has contact with a MOD.
Will be a bit strange if it does close though cos I've been there 16 years, which is over half of my life :-O
Still at least there are other technology-based forums to use, and the racists can bugger off back to Stormfront, Breitbart or wherever else they came from.