Tim Bernard recently completed an MBA at Cornell Tech, focusing on tech policy and trust & safety issues. He previously led the content moderation team at Seeking Alpha, and worked in various capacities in the education sector. There is arguably a broad consensus that social media presents a challenge to democracy and social cohesion, even if the degree and precise mechanics of that challenge are still contested. An emerging community of engineers and thinkers is also invested in the idea that the power of tech platforms to stoke division might instead be used to promote social cohesion, if the design of their systems can be re-engineered with that goal. If platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have contributed to phenomena such as polarization, the thinking goes, then perhaps they or their successors can do the opposite. A couple of hundred people interested in exploring this hypothesis came together in San Francisco in February for the inaugural Designing Tech for Social Cohesion conference, which was the first public event by the Council on Technology and Social Cohesion. The Council is convened by a group of organizations—including Search for Common Ground, the Toda Peace Institute, Braver Angels, More in Common, and the Alliance for Peacebuilding—that work in peacebuilding (often known as bridge building in the US), together with the Center for Humane Technology, which advocates for building tech that contributes to a “humane future that supports our well-being, democratic functioning, and shared information environment.” The Council and conference were initially inspired by…Can Tech Promote Social Cohesion?