Social Cohesion Technologies and Online Projects

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. The Designing Tech for Social Cohesion conference, San Francisco, California, February 23-25, 2023. The Designing Tech for Social Cohesion conference that took place in San Francisco in February showcased a range of online projects and technologies that could fall under the umbrella of PeaceTech, each relevant—in varying ways—to the endeavor of reducing toxic polarization and building social cohesion. The examples that were presented at the conference are described here, categorized into:  Components that can be integrated into actual products; Tools for peacebuilders, whether for government research, full-scale endeavors run by teams of professionals, or for enthusiasts trying to have better discussions across political designs;  Complete peacebuilding projects that make substantial use of technology.  (A different classification of PeaceTech projects can be found in Part VIII of Dr. Lisa Schirch’s article, “The Case for Designing Tech for Social Cohesion: The Limits of Content Moderation and Tech Regulation.”) Basic components Perspective API (Google Counter Abuse Technology team / Jigsaw) Perspective API is a machine learning classifier that scores submitted text for toxicity and a number of other anti-social attributes. It was created with web comments sections and other online text-based conversation forums in mind, motivated by the premise that abusive comments silence the voices of others, excluding them from the conversation. Perspective API is used…Social Cohesion Technologies and Online Projects