It actually isn't always possible to log out and walk away. Sometimes people find out where you live and go there, or find out where you work and contact your employer.

As they used to say in the 90s internet, "When you die on the internet you die in real life."

The internet is a huge part of many of our lives, especially with the quarantine. I think we should be more hesitant before deciding on "harassment victims should just stay out of it" as a general solution to harassment. For some reason we rarely consider that a legitimate solution to harassment in physical locations; if a stalker shows up to you whenever you go to any park in your city, people generally agree that the solution isn't to say that you specifically should just stay out of parks.

Yes - and? If those bad actors are screaming down every meaningful discussion in the forum you moderate (and supposedly care about), all the people you'd want to stick around will leave. If moderators would care little enough about the community that they log out and walk away, the wouldn't be moderators.

You realize that people will look through 20 years of post history, triangulate every piece of information you've ever mistakenly let loose that you haven't thought about in a decade, and use that information to harass you outside of the internet, right?

My first high school crush has been doing this continuously for 20 years^, in case anyone things this is a made-up story. Stalking behaviors are not rational, and they do not care that 20 years have passed. Stalkers do not care that you walked away.

^ They don't seem to realize that after the wave of 28 death threats in an evening 15 years ago (in writing, I still have them for the cops), I'm simply not going to communicate with them ever again, unless it's to their local constabulary to deliver a restraining order. I half expect they'll show up here to reply to my comment with a green account and go on yet another thousand-word crazy monologue rant about how they are entitled to my friendship after 20 years of never-ending harassment. We'll see.