That was after the killings. And please do not saunter over to YouTube or Twitter or Reddit if you want any relief, as you will only find more of the same.

The negligence does not stop at the platforms but includes who pays for these platforms, which is how I found myself at a dinner party recently where the guests were ranking Silicon Valley funders from most to least toxic: Russia, China, Kuwait, Qatar, along with various dicey high-net-worth individuals across the globe.

“They are all linked to awful behavior in some way if you are being really honest with yourself,” a well-known entrepreneur said. “Thank goodness for Singapore.” (Apparently “Crazy Rich Asians” had been good for the brands of funds tied to the Singapore government, like Temasek and GIC.)

And of course there is Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who has flooded tech with Saudi investments. His glossy reform sheen has worn thin in the wake of the brutal murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at what appears certainly to have been the behest of the government Prince Mohammed heads — or more precisely, beheads.

His government also jails activists and decimates Yemen with a war, but it was only a few months ago that he was squired around Google headquarters by Sergey Brin. In hindsight, the obsequious reception now looks unfortunate, to say the least.

So where are we now? Far too much of the money social media companies are using to host thugs like Mr. Sayoc and Mr. Bowers was paid for by thugs like Prince Mohammed . And, other than some tut-tutting about the horror of it all, there are no signs that the industry that considers itself the most woke on the planet is thinking of giving the money back or talking about not taking it in the future.

I cannot tell you how sad that is to write, because when I first saw the internet way back when, I hoped that it would help eliminate the attitudes that had fueled those horrible letters to me. I naïvely thought a lone man sending a reporter a missive of malevolence could not find such refuge on the wide-open internet, where his hate would be seen for what it was and denounced and exorcised.