Doctor Katherine Cross, a doctoral student at the University of Dr. Katherine Cross from her new book "Logging out: Why is the Politics (almost) never confused" that social media may not be too big in her new book "Logging out: Reambying: Reambying: Posting and Politics (Almost). Political value. Cross focuses on the political left movement and focuses on how platforms like X and Facebook arouse people's attention to political undertakings, but they have no power to cultivate long -term changes.

"Technology is politics," Cross wrote, "sometimes covering the way that social media may be anti -politically.

The University of Wisconsin interviewed Cross, talking about this book, and why people just simply cancel -spend less time on social media platforms -maybe the best solution.

Your core argument is that the social media platform is fundamentally "anti -politics." Can you explain what you mean and why?

Catherine Cross: In the mid -to -late 2000s, a wave of technological optimism swept us, coincided with the rise of Web 2.0 and contemporary social media. These new platforms are no longer isolated in forums or chat rooms. Instead, you can suddenly point a digital microphone and talk to the entire world without any obstacles. This makes crowdsses a reality.

We started to see large -scale, non -leader protests in Iran, Central Asia, Ukraine, and Georgia. We see people on the streets and organize them in various ways through simply reading social media posts. This seems to be like magic, just like we bypassed the hierarchical system of the old power network and the government, large enterprises and trade unions. This seems to change the process of history, because protests like Arabia have overturned the government.

However, many experiences in my own online operation have made me think about what will happen next. When I followed up a lot of such protests, there seemed to be no lasting changes after the camera disappears. Yes, the government collapses. But the next -generation rulers involved are the same oligopoly as before. Someone really believes that the current President of Egypt is very different from Hisney Mubarak in ideology?

This is the unfortunate story of the movement caused by many Internet. #Metoo is another example -the durability of these changes is far less durable as we want. People pay attention to personal justice again and again, and they hope that these incidents represent more important and lasting collective structural changes. For example, the prosecution against Harvey Weinstein is undoubtedly a achievement of the #Metoo movement. However, even this is canceled.

The crowdsses on social media give people an illusion of collective action and power, but it lacks the ability to guide the public to achieve any sustainable collective goals. You may change a person, but you can't actually change the world, because crowdsourcing is not a sustainable organization, and it cannot instruct political power.

Do you see the same anti -political model in the right wing sports?

Social media forces people to pay attention to symbolic, gestures, language, and aesthetic issues -these things are easier to debate in social media than more important issues. What we see is not a subtle policy debate, but more like nonsense that broke the short sponsorship of Bud Light in Dylan Mulvaney. In many ways of incredible hatred for her incredible hatred, because it is pure gesture and aesthetic.

"I don't like this person because she is a cross -gender. Let us debate whether she is a woman, let us debate whether she is suitable for Bud Light's core people, and then let us stack ruthlessly in her and any to defend her and attack the company. People ask for people -what?

If you want to attack and try to destroy a person, or to pick up a community member to abuse to cause paranoia to a community, then social media is the best ally in this career. However, right -wing people also have their own collectivism vision. Some of them dream of a new empire, or they dreamed of the nation. But they will not get these things through social media releases.

You also think that new, decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky do not solve this crushing model of Twitter's popularity. What problems do you think of the new platform, and the problem they tried to solve the Twitter?

The problem of a platform like Mastodon is that Twitter's culture still exists -appealing, cliché, harassment activities, and prejudice. For example, there are some additional deceleration bands in harassment, but Mastodon actually only copied many dramatic communication of Twitter's infamous. I was influenced by many vicious dramas from outside the outside world, which caused the server to be destroyed.

Bluesky is more like Twitter, because even if it can be scattered into various servers, almost everyone is still on the main server Bluesky.social. Therefore, this experience is very similar to the large amount of content you get on Twitter. In general, its prejudice is indeed less -Nazi is much less, which is really good.

Some marginalized communities built new homes there. People can now create their own server. This should lead to the complete decentralization of the platform, making it less likely to be affected by the acquisition of billionaires. This is a good thing.

But I don't know that we will use anything very similar to the Web 2.0 platform to solve bigger problems. I started to reduce posting on Bluesky, because I realized that I returned to this old place again, and I was always angry and started to quarrel with others.

Instead, I began to focus on talking with the people I met outside the platform, or just reply to the post I can be happy. But social media aims to induce you to take almost automatically, so you still have to consciously resist this fact that it has not changed much here.

This leads to the title of this book- "Logging out". Can you explain why you get this prescription?

Whenever I feel that my point of view becomes better, this comes from spending less time on social media, and more time to make myself immersed in my community again. I also realized that those who were fortunate to be able to work at home in the most popular people finally spent more time on social media -its influence is definitely negative.

I saw people falling into the rabbit hole of political radicals and paranoia. I think, "I know you, this is not you. But they have shifted most of the social life to a platform. This platform rewarded this new, more toxic and out -of -tech self.

In the preliminary study of my papers, several public health experts told me that during the period, Twitter differentiated their careers along the route of social media. Historically, their words were originally good, and they had different problems such as the transmission mechanism behind the scenes.

However, during the period of popularity, some of these researchers obtained a large number of followers. Suddenly, they had to please those who expected them to stand aside. This makes it more difficult for these experts to tell the truth they see, or adjust what they say to new evidence. Public health experts hope to use Twitter to hold a free graduate seminar for the world.

But on the contrary, suddenly a large number of fan camps appeared in the public. They held slogans and slogans to make a half -life unfamiliar understanding of the details of these academic controversy. As a result, Twitter began a lawsuit in the real world.

All of this allows me to think that individuals can adopt the most effective solution is to reduce the time spent on social media. Ask myself very seriously, "If I try to use this platform for some political purpose, does it help to achieve my goal? What is going on? If you can't answer this question in detail, then you should cancel the account number And find different methods.

Do you have to add?

Social media provides many instantaneous and personal emotional satisfaction, and it is easy to mistake it as politics. These platforms encourage this personalization. Yes, as the words are cliché, you are a product, but you are also the lonely unit of this service. When this happens, you start to meet your emotional needs, not everything else.

Many Internet discourse about politics is about venting, and is desire to be listened. This is very healing. However, although this may have a certain value, in a limited sense, it is a profound confrontation with real politics, because politics has never been truly personal: it is about collective and politics. But the priority of social media for personal emotions is the curse of real organization.

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