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Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems
Research professor in the Kahlert School of Computing at the University of Utah. Co-director of the Flux Research Group: https://www.flux.utah.edu. I build research infrastructure: https://cloudlab.us, https://powderwireless.net, https://emulab.net, https://geni.net.
I do not speak for my employer, nor do they speak for me
Not a boffin
Profile pic: Middle aged white man with grey hair and a large beard wearing sunglasses
Banner: Magtape of UNIX V4 and a VT220. Credit: Dan Hixson
Web: https://ricci.io/
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Pronouns: he/him
FFXIV main: GNB
Joined: 2026-05-27 00:42:02
15 notes, 0 following, 0 followers
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-07-31 12:39:52)
At last! I've added real OAUTH support (entirely in the browser, so I don't need to process any credentials on the server) to https://moderation-explorer.online/ .
This tool shows you how the people you follow, and that follow you, are spread out over the Fediverse, and explains how moderation works. In advanced mode (using OAUTH, now) it'll show you stats from your actual timeline.
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-07-27 07:06:51)
When this post is approximately 3 hours old (at 7 PM MDT / 1 AM UTC), mysterious #Monsterdon toots will come bubbling up from the depths!
Will you watch along? (It's free on Tubi and there are other free ways to watch too!) Will you mute the hashtag? Will you just shrug and get confused?ONLY YOU CAN SAY!
Tonight! Giant crickets, apparently? I still need confirmation about whether we're talking about the insects or the sport. Either one sounds like a good time though, and like they could lead to the end of the world: Beginning of the End (1957)
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-07-22 00:07:47)
RE: https://writing.exchange/@writefreely/116953740059647415
If you run a @writefreely instance PLEASE pay attention to this! I've seen over 100,000 new accounts on writefreely in the last week, probably mostly spam, unfortunately.
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-07-20 09:14:54)
Root post for #monsterdon , you probably know the drill by now: mute the tag or accept your fate as you get bombarded by high-quality posts about a low-quality movie.
Tonight it's a movie titled Solarbabies (1986), and you know what? That's all I care to know about the movie going in.
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-07-13 05:43:21)
Hello #monsterdonians! I have two HOT TIPs for you!
Did you know that, due to the way federation works, you might not be seeing all posts with the tag?
*This is probably fine!* There are a lot of them!
But maybe you want more?
TIP 1: See how much of Monsterdon you're missing: visit https://tag-federation.online/#tag=monsterdon and put your instance in one of the boxes (not the first one, mastodon dot social probably sees most of the Monsterdon posts).
TIP 2: If you want to see a LOT MORE posts, here are two options:
a) Follow @monsterdon - this is a bot that will boost tagged posts by participating users and participating servers into your timeline (see https://tags.pub/#optin if you want to be a participating user)
b) If you're on Mastodon, you can paste the following URL into your "search" box and hit "follow": https://relay.fedi.buzz/tag/monsterdon (I don't know if this works on non-mastodon instances). This is a different bot that scrapes a lot more posts and boosts them into your timeline
#MonsterdonAlert
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-07-10 08:21:06)
I finally added an oft-requested feature to https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/ , my project to track statistics for the #fediverse and other Internet infrastructure. it now includes history for the Shannon Index, showing how decentralization has evolved over the time I've been collecting data.
---Attachments---
image: https://fd.discuss.systems/media_attachments/files/116/892/573/656/379/028/original/1097b456888c1d43.png
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-07-04 15:18:33)
It can be hard to understand how hashtags spread around the #fediverse, so I built a little tool to help you explore how visible hashtags are on different servers. The page also contains tips for how you can follow hashtags more effectively and help your own tagged posts get spread more broadly.
https://tag-federation.online/
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-06-29 09:21:00)
At 7 PM MDT / 6 PM PDT today, I, and a bunch of other folks, will watch Zarkorr! the Invader (1996) and post excessively, using the #monsterdon hashtag. You can: watch along with us for free (see #monsterdonAlert for details); mute the hashtag (in Mastodon, right click on the hashtag to make a new filter for it or; be confused!
I assume we'll see some Invading tonight, and hopefully some stuff worthy of exclamation! points! I don't know what a Zarkorr! is but it starts with a Z so it's clearly a rad science fiction thing, and it Invades apparently so lfg
Reply to @mastodonmigration@mastodon.online
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-06-26 01:45:32)
@mastodonmigration My take on this, from a network/protocols/platform perspective, is that this is an indication that the "stacked moderation" that Bluesky is trying is failing to solve the scaling problem with moderation. As Ken points out, many, many other people - most of them more marginalized and with less of a platform than Ken - have been temporarily or permanently banned. In theory, Bluesky has a bunch of tools, including shared blocklists and a "label" system that give users a significant amount of control over their experience, and it's the users themselves that get to create these things. This is good, and the Fediverse has things it should learn from this. However, the original idea was that Bluesky would do minimal moderation at the "base" layer, and these "stacked" tools would be the main way users kept their experience safe and enjoyable. This was supposed to solve the problem that Mike Masnick has written about extensively that good moderation does not scale. Unfortunately, this is not how it has worked out. Yes, users make good use of the stacked tools. But Bluesky is still doing bad moderation at the base layer.
Reply to @ricci@discuss.systems
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-06-18 08:13:48)
Men are too emotional to be allowed to toot
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-06-18 07:10:46)
Sorry I am in A Mood today
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-06-15 11:21:09)
Congratulations, everyone, for successfully making it through the year 2889 (except it's not the year 2889, I guess?) in the year 2026
Thanks to my inability to remember when I owe my spouse a date night, I joined y'all tonight through the magic of time travel (watching it hours ago and using scheduled posts), which somehow feels appropriate for a movie that doesn't take place when it purports to either
IT'S ALL LIES!
https://discuss.systems/@ricci/116749664505730357
#Monsterdon
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-06-15 08:14:55)
When this post is about 2 hours old (at 7 PM MDT / 9 PM EDT) we will #Monsterdon !
This means that you, yes YOU can watch a movie of questionable quality along with hundreds of your new best friends.
OR you might want to mute the hashtag if you *don't* want your Sunday night (or Monday morning, or...) timeline to be full of comments of questionable quality. In the Mastodon web UI, you can do this by clicking on the hashtag above and selecting "Mute #Monsterdon " This will take you to the Filters page, where you can create a new filter for Monsterdon.
This week: In The Year 2889 (1969). What sold me on this movie was this quote from a review:
"Although not set in the year 2889, 'In The Year 2889' ... "
When is it actually set? Why 2889? LET'S FIND OUT
Not ONLY is this movie streaming free (at least in the US) on Tubi, it is available on WIKIPEDIA! Yes, that's right, you can watch the whole thing by going to its Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Year_2889_(film) and just... hitting play. C'mon, you know you want to be able to brag to your friends that you've watched an entire feature-length film on Wikipedia, right?
Reply to @ricci@discuss.systems
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-05-26 22:35:35)
Petition to rebrand toots as "micro encyclicals"
Rob Ricci@ricci@discuss.systems (2026-05-26 22:28:18)
Going to start calling all my blog posts "encyclicals" so that people take them more seriously