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Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, people have occasionally asked themselves a question: “Is it okay for me to keep using this thing?”

For many users, Musk has made Twitter—or as it is now technically known, X—a moral question by committing increasingly irresponsible missteps. There was the time he was publicly duped by a fake conservative website into spreading a conspiracy about Paul Pelosi. He’s tweeted out racist dog whistles about Black people. Recently, he posted outright antisemitism, as his site becomes a haven for the far-right.

Most users have stayed. The site still hums with activity, and is still the closest thing to a place of centralized discourse. But the numbers show a substantial share have departed: some 15% of users left since Musk took over last October; ad revenue is down by 54% over the same period.

Staying does feel bad. Logging on to send little tweets while knowing you are playing some sliver of a part in enabling a petulant billionaire, however minuscule and indirect, is at a minimum embarrassing.

If you’re a journalist or believe in the mission of the Fourth Estate, it is especially embarrassing to keep posting on a platform where you know the owner has and will continue to denigrate the profession while actively trying to minimize its reach. There is an even more serious version of the problem if you’re Black or Jewish, two communities Musk has targeted.

At least a few people believe that it’s more than embarrassing; it’s deeply immoral. In an online exchange at the beginning of December among something of a whose-who of columnist men who write about tech, Ezra Klein........

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