I think you underestimate the burden of misinformation being spread about you and your passion project online, and having a KiwiFarms thread about you on the internet. The harassment also has a real life impact because the founder has been swatted multiple times, endangering their lifes. So they can sadly do much more harm than just being a keyboard warrior. And besides that, it also has an impact on cooperation the project can do with other organisations and companies. GrapheneOS has asked whether other organisaties would want to share their Android partner access with them and they got replies stating that they would want to share the partner access but will refrain from sharing it becuase they were scared that if people found out they helped that they would also get harassed. Also, GrapheneOS had tried for many years to get a cooperation with a non-Google OEM to support other hardware than just Pixels and the harassment has also been an issue for things like that in the past. Luckily, GrapheneOS is currently in active talks with an OEM though who hasn't taken any issue with it, so let's hope for the best.