Zaibatsu was a hidden black man on Digg.

Zaibatsu, a.k.a. Reg Saddler, is best known for being the #4 Digg user of all time (despite being arbitrarily banned from Digg since September 2008). A political progressive, Zaibatsu had the power to collect Internet news stories that were ignored by mainstream media and bring it to the web’s attention.¹ (Zaibatsu contends that he is even more influential now, since he has relocated on to Twitter.)

A lesser-known fact about Zaibatsu is that he was a top Digg user for a long time before he outed himself in 2007, revealing himself to be a black man who had previously kept his racial identity hidden.²

Declaring your anti-racist intentions may make you more racist.

It is probably not a good idea to publicly declare that you intend to be less racist, or that you are trying to be less racist. Doing so may make you less likely to change, which would result in you continuing with your racist behaviours.

In a post titled, Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them., Derek Sivers writes:

Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen.

Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.

In 1933, W. Mahler found that if a person announced the solution to a problem, and was acknowledged by others, it was now in the brain as a “social reality”, even if the solution hadn’t actually been achieved.

NYU psychology professor Peter Gollwitzer has been studying this since his 1982 book “Symbolic Self-Completion” (pdf article here) – and recently published results of new tests in a research article, “When Intentions Go Public: Does Social Reality Widen the Intention-Behavior Gap?”

Howto: Post your Blogger comment actions on Twitter automatically

This tutorial shows you how to take a Blogger comment feed and output a new feed containing only your comments, formatted for twitterfeed. This is useful if you frequently comment on a Blogger blog and want your comment actions to be automatically posted on Twitter.

My last tutorial showed you how to use Yahoo! Pipes to filter a WordPress comment feed so that it outputs a new feed containing only your comments. However, Blogger comment feeds require more processing than WordPress comment feeds to make the RSS items presentable as a twitterfeed tweet. (If you want the WordPress version of this tutorial, see the previous tutorial.)

The method in this tutorial creates the title of the feed item based on the blog post’s URL. For example, if I commented on Sweden expected to legalize gay marriage in May 2009 which has the URL http://gay-persons-of-color.blogspot.com/2009/01/sweden-expected-to-legalize-gay.html, the final tweet would be “commented on Sweden expected to legalize gay” with the URL appended at the end as a TinyURL link. Although the item title may not perfectly match the title of the original post (“Sweden expected to legalize gay” vs. “Sweden expected to legalize gay marriage in May 2009″), this method is easier and faster than extracting the real post title.

What you will need

• the Blogger comment feed of a Blogger blog on which you frequently comment. (The URL of a Blogger comment feed looks something like http://winstoninwonderland.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss. All Blogger blogs have a comment feed URL in this format by default.)
• a Yahoo! account (free)
• a twitterfeed account (free)
• a Twitter account (free)

Howto: Post your WordPress blog comment actions on Twitter automatically

This tutorial shows you how to use Yahoo! Pipes and twitterfeed to automatically log your WordPress comments on Twitter.

Why it is useful to automate tweets

The great thing about Twitter is that it asks you, “What are you doing?”, and no update status is too trivial. If you are like me, you use Web 2.0 services outside of Twitter. If you are like me, you feed the RSS feeds of your blog posts, Wikipedia edits, and Delicious saves into Twitter via twitterfeed, so that whenever you blog, edit Wikipedia, or save a link to Delicious, your actions are logged on Twitter.

I also comment on other people’s blogs, and I thought it would be a great idea to keep track of my comments on Twitter. Some comment systems provide a RSS feed of your own comments, but most WordPress blogs provide only the RSS feed of all comments. I decided to use Yahoo! Pipes to filter the comment feed of my WordPress.com blog and output a new RSS feed containing only my comments.

What you will need

• the WordPress comment feed of a WordPress blog on which you frequently comment. (The URL of a WordPress comment feed looks something like http://pddp.wordpress.com/comments/feed/. All WordPress.com blogs have a comment feed URL in this format.)
• a Yahoo! account (free)
• a twitterfeed account (free)
• a Twitter account (free)

Activism 2.0: Fight racism by editing Wikipedia.

Although Wikipedia articles on unfamiliar topics tend to appear reasonable and coherent, they are actually authored by only a small subset of individuals. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, which gives the impression that the content on Wikipedia is a cumulation of public knowledge, but the content of Wikipedia is actually a reflection of a particular demographic that skews white, American, and male.

Some white people who are bothered by racism do not know what action to take to erode racism. However, one thing that anti-racist white people can do is edit Wikipedia to counteract edits by white supremacists, which tend to remain unchecked and unchallenged.

Welcome to Activism 2.0, where the keyboard is mightier than the pen.