On Dec. 4, a 28-year-old North Carolina man bearing a handgun and a military-style rifle stormed a Washington, D.C., pizza joint called Comet Ping-Pong, determined to “self-investigate” rumors that the restaurant was the center of a child sex-slave ring with connections to the Clinton campaign. Edgar M. Welch, of Salisbury, N.C., who fired his weapon inside the restaurant but injured no one, later admitted “the intel on this wasn’t 100%.”

Much has been made of the rise in racist and xenophobic rhetoric, anti-Muslim attacks, and anti-Semitic trolling in the wake of Donald Trump’s ascent, and rightly so. But just as Trump’s promises to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, block Muslim immigration, and restore “law and order” have emboldened nativists and racists, so has his history of casual misogyny and alleged sexual assault (“grab them by the pussy”) energized an explicitly sexist element within the noxious “Alt-Right” movement.

Google aspires “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Facebook’s mission is to “make the world more open and connected.” Twitter, while occasionally billing itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party,” prohibits “hateful conduct,” telling users: “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.”