In many countries the first time offender 20-something would spend a night in jail, be arraigned the next day, and likely enter a diversionary process where they need to face up to what they did. Perhaps a conference with the victim. Do some community service. Etc. 9/10 this will give someone the chance to seriously rethink their behavior.

Many countries they would be beaten or killed. It really depends on what many countries means to you.

It's the kind of stuff they did to "hackers" back in the 80s and 90s who were just phreaking phone lines.

Just to be clear, I think the clear reading of what is being discussed is "a specific and targeted death threat, either alone or in concert with others", not a hot take that fails to age well.

And, so what?

Because tossing people in a hole at random to set an example is not, in general, policy we want to encourage maybe?

Having kids intimidating strangers by throwing around death threats isn't something we should encourage either.

No one is talking about encouraging such behavior. But if the FBI undertakes a serious investigation to track them down, when they get tracked down, they may well end up in a Federal prison for a long time--especially if they can't afford a few hundred thousand dollars for the best legal support. Maybe they deserve to have their life ruined for probably poorly considered juvenile behavior but I'm not sure. There are societal costs associated with pursuing and prosecuting every crime to the max.

Folks aren't asking for people to be locked up forever for this. A comment in the thread mentioned about first offenders getting no jail time, but needing to publicly apologize, do community service, etc. Repeat offenders should likely serve some jail time, with each offense bringing stronger punishment.

Doing nothing about this does encourage its behavior, especially since there's entire communities around doing it (kiwi farms being one of the worst).