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Rob Ricci

@ricci.io
349 followers 110 following 1.8K posts

Research Professor in the Kahlert School of Computing at the University of Utah. I don't speak for them. Here, I mostly post about decentralization and social networks. I'm more active on other topics in the fediverse at discuss.systems/@ricci .

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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 4h
A 30 foot statue of a whale is painted in light blue, white, and pink, with accents that suggest splashes, polka dots, and a large stylized eye rises from a roundabout. In the background, several dozen people look on.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 30/09/2026
Simple, I don't use it as a news source. That's never what I've wanted from any social network. "Influencer behavior" is also not absent there but wayyyyyy lower than it is even here (which is better than X and TikTok, etc.)
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 30/09/2026
not on the social-network-that-shall-not-be-named-here :) 🦣
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 30/09/2026
And this is also why I'm done with most social media, this is just not the kind of stuff I need all day
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 29/09/2026
re-create them later) - and while different services/apps *kinda* own records re: their lexicon, pretty much everybody uses the profile lexicon that bsky owns, there's stansite that is shared by multiple services, etc. I think it's possible, but requires a lot of knowledge of app semantics.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 29/09/2026
I think that deactivating only for a specific service is pretty problematic in atproto; there are different status codes that you can return for the whole repo, but not for individual records, I think you'd have to delete them for a while (in a way in which you remember them so that you can
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 29/09/2026
And yeah, I know, BlueSky PBLLC has repeatedly said that takedowns are not supposed to happen at the PDS, but they do, and they have been saying this for a year that I've been listening, and so far as I know, much longer than that, so this is, functionally, the network architecture.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 29/09/2026
just my *sky posts is ... pretty shit, actually. I can see why you'd make this decision, it's the rational thing to do for your users, I think the underlying model is - well, I wouldn't say broken exactly, but really not what people would expect and fundamentally user-hostile.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 29/09/2026
Yeah, this is exactly why I consider the "everything account" aspect of atproto to be an anti-feature, not a selling point. I know, we all have too many accounts, and hate it, but the idea that the bluesky mod team could take out my entire online presence (well, not mine, I'm on my own PDS), not
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 29/09/2026
My suspicion, based on some experience but not extensive research, is that a *lot* of atproto apps are not actually handling user data in ways that one would expect from reading how the protocol is supposed to work.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 29/09/2026
I've noticed cases where, during PDS takedowns, other services continue to serve taken-down content, so my guess is that al lot of your stuff would stay up.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 29/09/2026
Ask ChatGPT if your PDS is safe to eat
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Reposted by Rob Ricci
Filippo Valsorda @filippo.abyssdomain.expert · 28/09/2026
I'm excited to announce that the PLC Organization now has a statute! And a bank account! And a @standard.site publication! All the important stuff. The PLC Org is an independent Swiss Association meant to operate the PLC directory, which collects and distributes signed updates to atproto accounts.
blog.plcred.org
First steps of the PLC organization - Public Ledger of Credentials Organization
One year ago, Bluesky Social PBC announced their intention to facilitate the creation of an independent organization to operate the Public Ledger of Credenti…
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Reposted by Rob Ricci
Evelyn @kandake.africa · 25/09/2026
Dead serious I think Atmosphere in a Box might be one of the best DevEX things I've ever created. Dropped it in to remove a railway dependency on one product already. Released 0.7.0 last night adding dynamic network allocation, wildcard domains, jwks secret generation, and stronger CI examples.
tangled.org
kandake.africa/atmosphereinabox
All in one local private environment for operating PLC, PDS, and whatever you need for ATprotocol development
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Reposted by Rob Ricci
Blacksky Algorithms @blackskyweb.xyz · 23/09/2026
🎉 Acorn is officially open. You can now create a space for your community on the open social web - no wait required. acorn.blacksky.community
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
Yeah the analysis I just did agrees, they are signing up new users at a far higher rate than eurosky, but most of their users don't do much. mu.social/profile/ricc...
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
Yeah so I got bigger numbers of weekly-active users on W (38,687) vs. Eurosky (33,274) in the last week, but a much smaller fraction of W users post anything, a lot more seem to be new signups. Do I remember seeing that you have to be identity-verified to post on W?
Liked: W 52%, E 91%
Followed: W: 39%, E 64%
Created: W 33%, E 6%
Reposted: W: 14%, E:55%
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
Yeah, gonna do a random sample of this vs. a few other big PDSes - I do think there's going to be a noticeable difference since our numbers are so different
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
I'm finding accounts that have a significant number of likes but not many posts, eg. this one as just one example: pdsls.dev/at://did:plc... I'm trying to produce a more comprehensive count
pdsls.dev
at://martin-mto.wsocial.eu/app.bsky.feed.like
List of app.bsky.feed.like records from martin-mto.wsocial.eu
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
Ooh, no, I need to read that!
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
So far spot checking a bunch that I list as recently-active does show actual recent activity - @mackuba.eu are you counting likes, follows, blocks, etc. or only posts?
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
The way that I'm counting is listening to several firehoses, and counting anything visible on-protocol. IIRC Kuba is counting only bsky.* lexicons. I'm trying to dig in to see why my numbers are so much higher.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
Yeah I'll dig in and see what I can learn
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
I suspect they have a large number of accounts that have written to lexicons not under bsky.* I have about 15k active in the last month (written to any lexicon). I'll see if I can sample some to see what they are doing.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
*sky & Hutch
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 21/09/2026
I'm super curious about the difference we have in numbers for W - the others I have roughly line up with this (except that I'm doing MAU), except that in my numbers W is about the same size as eurosky. Must be a lot of W accounts writing non-bluesky records?
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 20/09/2026
... this makes some people basically unemployable in a system where all screening is done by a small number of models, whereas in a system with huge number of humans *may* (but is not guaranteed to) give people a chance.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 20/09/2026
... particular ways (eg. racially) but their biases are somewhat diverse; eg. not every hiring manager is biased for or against the same attributes to the same degree. Use of centralized services for hiring screening means that applicants meet the same small set of biases everywhere they apply -
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 20/09/2026
... In societies with existing racial biases, just about everything correlates with race at least a little bit. So yeah, remove the main data points, definitely, but you are not going to remove all sources of bias. 2) Yes people are also biased, and yes they are also systematically biased in
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 20/09/2026
Two big challenges with this: 1) Models trained on existing data have been shown to pick up on proxies when you remove directly-inadmissible criteria - eg. you remove race, they pick up on names. Remove names, they pick up on zip codes. Remove zip codes, they pick up on colleges and high schools.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 18/09/2026
This is a very good point, it's very much not the current "shape" of atproto but it seems like it could be
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 18/09/2026
Neat!
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Reposted by Rob Ricci
Lucca @ Northsky 💚💜 @lucca.northsky.team · 18/09/2026
we just had the highest number of migrations in a single day that we've ever had! over 100 people claimed their invites and moved onto northsky today! 💚💜
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 18/09/2026
Can you say more about what this is? The catchphrase is intriguing, but their announcement and website don't say much
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 17/09/2026
Hmm. Just noticed that reposts from accounts with a label don't get treated the same as posts from accounts with that label. Seems maybe not ideal, for example when the label in question is 'spreads misinformation'?
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 17/09/2026
I find it amusing that in Aaron's latest Moderation Discourse Thread his replies to himself end hidden behind the 'show more replies' gate. I honestly still don't know how that thing works - is it because his account has a label that I have set to 'warn'?
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 14/09/2026
So uh this is a great time for AI and anti-AI people to be mixed back together for reasons they probably don't understand Just swell. So much for things being normal around here lol, see you again someday
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 14/09/2026
so uh what does this do to their moderation lists?
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 14/09/2026
I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for, but I wrote up what I learned about this design, and some of its flaws: blog.ricci.io/what-i-wish-...
blog.ricci.io
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About AT Protocol and Bluesky
I've been interested in atproto (the protocol that Bluesky, Blacksky, and many other applications - including pckt, where this blog is hosted! - run on) for about a year now. I'm by no means an expert, but I've read a lot of documentation and discussion, looked at various versions of the architectural diagrams, and spent a lot of time thinking about the implications for scaling, decentralization, and other aspects of design and operation. I run my own PDS. I wrote some clients that consume fireh...
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 13/09/2026
I sure hope
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 12/09/2026
I even have not one but two blogs now blog.ricci.io rob.leaflet.pub
blog.ricci.io
Stuff Rob Wrote
Sometimes, Rob writes stuff, and some of it ends up here.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 12/09/2026
I forget that we have not seen each other in years. I am literally wooly haired now. If you want a recent pic of me do an image search for "Alan Moore"
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 12/09/2026
Some thoughts inspired by their class so far discuss.systems/@ricci/11724... discuss.systems/@ricci/11721...
discuss.systems
Rob Ricci (@ricci@discuss.systems)
Content warning: very long thing about AI, sorry. i hope it's worth a read
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 12/09/2026
static.klipy.com
there's three, actually
Alt: There's three actually there's three, actually
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 12/09/2026
We had a great discussion of (the first half) of this report in @anamarasovic.bsky.social 's reading group, I'll put my takeaways up on Masto soon, I'm done posting about stuff other than atproto here
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 12/09/2026
I'm just sitting in on @svivek.bsky.social and @add-hawk.bsky.social 's Ethics in AI class without permission, professor privilege.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 10/09/2026
Every time I log in to this site lately it's a mistake
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 10/09/2026
With no datacenters you wouldn't be able to post this? If you do decide you want to learn something I did a photo essay: blog.ricci.io/datacenters-... (and yes I'm against the building of just about any new AI datacenters, we don't need them and they're being done in a maximally irresponsible way)
blog.ricci.io
Datacenters in Utah: A Photo Essay
There's a lot of stuff going around about datacenters, so I've spent some time in the last week visiting some of the ones in northern Utah. I started with a quick tour or some of the datacenters in the Salt Lake Valley. Some are indeed quite large, but there are a bunch of smaller ones too - and they are not always where you think! All of these are publicly known, and you can find them (and ones in your own area) at https://www.datacentermap.com/.
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 09/09/2026
The economic case for AI in many organizations is that it flips this on its head: the computer cannot be held accountable, therefore it's the best option to make management decisions. I strongly recommend The Unaccountability Machine if you haven't already read it
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Rob Ricci @ricci.io · 09/09/2026
It's also about redirecting responsibility from the humans choosing to do these things to another actor, which cannot be held accountable
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