Imagine your last tweetThe name for a message posted on an X (formerly Twitter) account. as a juicy hunk of meat. It is being dangled by a burglar in front of a hungry guard dog. He drops the delicious steak and the dog forgets his duties to feast, unaware that the burglar has snuck into his house.

The comparison might seem strange, but Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan would say it is the key to understanding our relationship with social media. A post (the meat) is a mere distraction for your mind (the guard dog). The distraction allows the platform (the burglar) to sneak into your life and wreak havoc. Sometimes, what we post is less important than where we post it.¹

In fact, McLuhan died 17 years before the first social media was even created, but this week, as users flee social media platform Twitter, his ideas are more relevant than ever.

Elon Musk's $44bn (£39bn) purchase of Twitter is not a success story so far. In his first days, he fired almost half of the company via email, many mistakenly, and alienated high-profile users by declaring that he would charge $8 (£7) per month for account verification.²

Most worryingly, Musk has vowed to restore freedom of speech to Twitter, leading to an increase in Tweets using racial slurs and hate speech.³

Celebrities Gigi Hadid and Whoopi Goldberg have dramatically left the platform in response, whilst competitor Mastodon, which markets itself as a "less toxic" Twitter, has gained over 230,000 new users in the past week, reflecting users' disapproval.

But opinions are divided. Twitter itself has reported unprecedented user growth following Musk's takeover of the company.

After all, no major social media site is perfect. Instagram has been linked to body dysmorphiaA mental health condition where someone spends a lot of time worrying about physical flaws, which are often unnoticeable to others. , anxiety and depressive disorders, Facebook has been accused of radicalising its users with an "unethical" algorithm, and researchers call TikTok a "surveillance app". What alternatives are there?

History shows us that it is not impossible to do good with a bad platform. VoltaireA French enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher known for his criticism of Christianity and slavery. and DiderotA French Enlightenment philosopher, art critic and writer known for his contribution to a major 18th Century French encyclopaedia. both wrote progressive texts under sponsorship from autocratsA leader who is not bound by constitutional norms or checked by other sources of political authority, like a parliament or the judicial system. whose politics they opposed. Revered Soviet writers such as Maxim Gorky were known to conspire with StalinJoseph Stalin was the president of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953. He transformed the country from a peasant society into an industrial superpower. However, he was a brutal leader and millions of his own citizens died during his leadership. in order to publish their works. They might have argued that the message was more important than the medium.

No: It will be no use trying to write sense on Twitter any longer. Any tweet of substance will be suffocated in the masses of abuse and hate speech. Boycotting something is the most effective way of enacting change.

Yes: Practically speaking, the best anyone can do with a bad situation is stay on the platform and try to promote some kind of balance. Reasonable people must stay on the platform to drown out the fake accounts and trolls.

Or... We should try to support other Twitter-adjacent platforms even if we choose to remain on Twitter. Ultimately, there is no perfect social media platform. There is no shame in choosing to stay connected, even if it is a moral grey area.