There was at least one mozilla employee that reported on their blog that they received death threats when they blogged about support for the new CEO (despite initially conflicting feelings, the blogger is gay). I'm not linking to the blog because they might end up getting more abuse.

When controversial stuff like this happens, it is sadly common to receive death threats on the internet. Given that employees merely voicing support received death threats, I would be surprised if the CEO did not receive such things as well.

Why would you not link to it? It is a public blog it is meant to be read. Respectful your point makes no logically sense. You think the HN crowd is the youtube crowd? Is it this one: http://incisive.nu/2014/thinking-about-mozilla/

I was talking about a different blogpost actually.

While I agree with you that the HN crowd is not YouTube, there are still many people reading this and sharing with others etc., and since the blogger I am talking about has already been harassed, I don't see a point in drawing more attention there. It doesn't help our discussion anyhow, there are only downsides.

I work at Mozilla. I don't know about Brendan, but other employees definitely received multiple death threats.

Why would anyone else get threatened?

Because people can be cruel idiots. Your question makes it sound like properly targeted death threats would be rational. They are not.

Because they blogged about the situation.

Of course a threat that actually contains the word threat is probably more comedic than threatening.

Reasonably legit news reporting on threats would probably contain the word "threat"; that's what I was looking for.