The Great Twitter Exodus of 2022 is still happening. It’s just a little…fractured. A lot of X power users migrated to Bluesky early on, which paved the way for a flood of folks to join that service in 2024. Meanwhile, a lot of technically inclined individuals are still hanging out on Mastodon (at least, that’s where I hang out).
Bluesky and Mastodon are both decentralized services, in theory, but users of one service can’t really talk to users on the other—or it wasn’t possible before Bridgy Fed, anyway. It’s a beta service that makes it possible for Bluesky and Fediverse-compatible applications, such as Mastodon, to interact.
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This is where Bridgy Fed comes in. With this service, individual users of either service can opt in to “bridging” their accounts. I tested this out with my friend and Lifehacker alumni Eric Ravenscraft, who hangs out on Bluesky more than me. It worked well—we can now see each other’s posts, like each other’s posts, and even talk to each other, cross-network.
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While this solution works well, there are a few hangups. Chiefly, it only functions if both people bridge their accounts. This means I can’t see any comments from Bluesky users unless they also are bridged, and vice versa: During our little test, a few other Mastodon users responded to my conversation with Eric, but Eric could not see those replies. This make sense if you know how the system works—only comments from bridged users are bridged—but it’s hardly ideal, and can lead to asymmetrical conversations. Unfortunately, the opt-in nature of the bridging service makes this inevitable.
If you are already using Bridgy Fed, how is it working out for you?
Okay, there’s one thing I don’t get with Bluesky: user handles usually are @[name].bsky.social. But with the bridge they end with brid.gy. The account of Ben Stiller is @benstiller.redhour.com. Are those domains different instances? I thought that’s not possible (yet?). How does one get a different domain in the handle?
You go to the settings and verify it. You don’t have to host anything, just verify that you own the domain via text file or DNS record and choose to set it as your handle. Bluesky’s ATProto has a couple extra layers of indirection and it’s very easy to get a custom handle as a result.
The downside of this setup is that running your own complete network is completely impossible. If you want to follow
theonion.com, anyone can finddid:plc:a4pqq234yw7fqbddawjo7y35in the DNS without too much work. That’s the identifier for The Onion’s Bluesky account, and even if they swapped back to.bsky.social, that ID number would stay. But that DID tells you absolutely nothing about where the data is currently hosted.So how do you figure that out? Well, you register it with https://plc.directory/ which is ran by Bluesky and cannot currently be replaced. There’s fancy cryptography involved that makes it hard for them to spoof data, but they are perfectly capable of simply not giving any data out for any given DID.
the .bsky.social is the main instance. The bridge acts as another instance.
For example one of my friends has a ATProtocol account hosted on the fellas.social instance, so his username is @johndoe.fellas.social
it basically works like lemmy and mastodon in that regard
The main difference with lemmy/fediverse is that instances don’t actually host the software, they just host the database. So it’s plug and play into any open source ATProtocol software. This dramatically decreases server loads and makes hosting an instance or your data cheaper but also means that software is more intensive to host.
Identities are somewhat decentrallized, but it’s pretty different from ActivityPub. People can host user data separately, but it isn’t really an instance. It is technically possible to have other relays (basically instances), but requires handling all the data on bluesky to connect to it. It would cost probably 50-100k USD/year, and that number will go up as more people join or if there’s more relays.
there a different domain option when creating a account, thats all i know.
Oh… Oh no…
So you can’t interact at all, or see bluesky comments or anything. It’s basically as if you subscribed to an RSS feed. Pretty useless no?
Never really understood the appeal of twitter-like platforms anyway.
You can, it’s just that individual accounts need to opt into the bridge.
So all 3 people on the whole bluesky who even know they can do that or give any fuck about mastodon.
There are tens of thousands of accounts opted into the bridge.
So y’all just pissing in cherrios today?
This is a brand new, opt in interoperability tool between 2 small-ish social networks. No shit its not heavily used yet. People who are using it can ask their friends to bridge, which will bring growth over time, just like any social networking experience.
What exactly are you complaining about? That someone else did something cool you don’t care about? That other people may enjoy something you don’t?
Well I don’t use either of those platforms, I was just curious. I just shared what I observed, I guess it does sound like a complaint.
Mostly disappointed that there even is a need for such a thing.
I’ve been seeing people migrate in mass lately. The biggest issue with the above is that it’s not at all intuitive. If Blue sky wants to be fediverse comparable, I think they need to make the process easier OR implement activity hub and link. As it is, all I see is people not opting in and a huge migration without activity hub users.
I’ve opted in on my fedi/mastodon account. But no one knows on the blue sky side to opt in so when I try to follow, no one shows up. It’s easier to just follow on RSS.
Oh well we can still have fun on our side of the Internet.
I really dont think we should be bending over backwards to accommodate blueskys clearly inferior protocal when activpub is objectivly better
I post on mastodon and bridge to bluesky. That way I can reach anyone there interested in following me, but I personally don’t have to bother with the site at all.
As someone trying to reach an audience, it’s pretty much perfect. Each to their own obviously.
Interoperability removes power from closed gardens. It makes the platform itself way less relevant.
“Bending over backwards” is how you undermine bluesky in favor of mastadon. We should 100% be doing it as much as possible.
Bluesky is not decentralized, stop calling it that.
I guess my private server and open source appview conntected to the ATprotocol are a conspiracy theory then?
Yes the vast majority of people are on the main instance, but the protocol and software are decentralised. And bluesky the PBC is actually providing grants for people to set up alternative servers to speed up the decentralisation process.
Bluesky is far from perfect but I’ve been quite disappointed by the “Fedi Good bluesky bad” oversimplifying and villification that has been going on here recently.
I guess my private server and open source appview conntected to the ATprotocol are a conspiracy theory then?
No, but they exist at the whim of Bluesky. Having multiple endpoints on your network doesn’t make it decentralized, if every endpoint is controlled by a single entity. This is an important distinction, because Bluesky can prevent a specific instance from interacting with the entire ATProto network, something which is not possible on ActivityPub, as there is no such authority who can completely shut down anybody else’s instance.
“Fedi Good bluesky bad”
yeah, it also dissapoints me. They fail to see what makes one more popular than other.
I’ve never been on Twitter/X, Bluesky, or Mastodon. But maybe I’d like to try.
So far I can’t decide because I prefer Activity Pub in principle, but always felt FOMO with Twitter and don’t want the same thing to happen with Bluesky.
I think the best of both worlds would be if I could make an account on both and have one account essentially repost anything from the main account, unless I’m replying to someone specifically where it wouldn’t make sense to reply on both accounts.
Not sure if this bridge is a step in that direction, but it’s far more important to me that everyone can see what I post on both sides than it is that people from both sides can reach me on a singular account. Not sure if others feel the same way.
That’s how it works, the bridge makes it possible to post your content to both. And if people who interact with it also use the bridge, it will be visible on both as well. The only downside is that you can’t interact with people who don’t use the bridge and at the same time are not reacting to your post on the same platform you are. For example, I have Mastodon account and use the bridge, if someone who only uses Bluesky, but not the bridge, comments a post by me, I have no way to react.
Yeah, I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same thing. What I’m looking for:
I make a Mastodon account
I make a Bluesky account
I connect them via the bridge
I post on one account, the same content is posted on both accounts
If someone replies to my post on Mastodon (which all Mastodon users can see), I can reply using my Mastodon account
If someone replies to my post on Bluesky (which all Bluesky users can see even if they have not opted into using the bridge), I can reply using my Bluesky account
From what you’re describing, it doesn’t sound like the bridge can facilitate this.
Nope, the bridge doesn’t allow that currently.
I think the best of both worlds would be if I could make an account on both and have one account essentially repost anything from the main account, unless I’m replying to someone specifically where it wouldn’t make sense to reply on both accounts.
That’s what I’d want from a bridge - something to connect an account at each end. If/when Bluesky suffers enshittification, it would mean that folks on Bluesky could just switch the direction of the bridge and start posting in the Fediverse. No sunk cost leaving you hanging on, no high barrier to moving.
please don’t
Thanks, very insightful!
Maybe elaborate?
do not bridge the fedi to bluesky, please.
its opt in and the bridge is only a single instance so you can defederate from the instance
You can just block it.
