No, you've missed my point. I'm saying that your analysis is fixated on the idea that e.g. a rape threat predicts a rape. I'm saying, "sure, maybe you're right", and rape threats really don't predict rapes. But they probably do predict other threats: career damage, reputation damage from forged posts, online breakin attempts, &c.
Ah...yeah, I was focusing on things directed directly to the victim in this part, not on things about the victim directed to third parties or the general public.
I would suggest education to combat that--as part of teaching kids early about nasty trolls and how to handle them, teach them that they have to be skeptical of negative personal information about people they get from strangers on the internet.
However, I fear that would probably not work. Easily believing rumors without good (or even barely plausible...) evidence seems to be a general tendency of people. Hell, people will believe that bike lanes are part of a UN plot to take away the guns of American civilians [1], so I suppose I should not be surprised that they would readily believe a rumor that someone slept their way into a job or distributed child pornography of their own kids or stole someone else's work.
I currently have no ideas on how to effectively fix this.
