Bridgy Fed is An Interesting Way to Bridge Fediverse and Bluesky
This is might be the coolest way to connect between the two social network protocols
I’ve been active in fediverse for a while. Two years or so. I started off from Misskey Indonesia, created my account and eventually I enjoyed it. But I’m not going to talk how I joined fediverse at the first place, but I want to talk about what was happened since Elon bought Twitter (now X, I’m not gonna call it that) back in October 2022. Exactly two years ago. A lot happened since then. People starting to realize that maybe Twitter will getting worse after Elon’s acquisitions, which is true. And they seeking for a better alternative for it.
For quite a while, Bluesky which kicked off by Jack Dorsey, ex-CEO of Twitter, had been around for limited users through it beta invite. The vast world of fediverse servers which using software like Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, Pleroma, etc which based on ActivityPub protocol also had been around since 2016 but still had been a niche choice for majority people going online. And lastly, Meta announced Threads, a new social platform that tandems with Instagram that want to compete Twitter directly after Elon’s bad decisions towards the blue bird and the users.
It’s a long story, I don’t think it would fit for today’s article. So let’s set with the connection between Bluesky and Fediverse in general. Bluesky is based on AT Protocol, while Fediverse is using ActivityPub. Even though both are using the term “federated” and “decentralized”, those two fundamentally can’t talk to each other. The concept of connection in-between servers and users are different, that’s why Bluesky and Fediverse are different too.
While back ago, but I’m not really sure where, I found about Bridgy Fed. It was last year if I could recall correctly. Essentially, it’s a bridge that connects between decentralized social network protocols and also websites too. It supports Fediverse with ActivityPub, Bluesky with AT Protocol and IndieWeb that using webmentions and microformats2. Actually, at th first time, I can only bridge my blog to the fediverse and Bluesky. It’s still confusing for me to explore and try the features at the time. And after I realized I had nothing much to do about it, I decided to leave it as it is. But we gonna focus on the bridge between Fediverse and Bluesky for now.
Recently, or more like last month, I revisit the website again because I stumbled upon that bookmark when I managing my Raindrop, nice bookmark manager, btw. And that was when I found out that Bridgy Fed is now supporting AT Protocol too. After I tried to connect it to my Bluesky and Misskey Indonesia account, it works so well. I even amazed that it’s not just acting like an RSS feed, but also able to show posts, doing likes, replies and reposts with ease.
It works by the user from fediverse and from Bluesky following the Bridgy Fed account first. @ap.brid.gy from Blueksy and @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy from the fediverse. And tada! You can see one and each other from each side now. You can do all the basic things and interacting like usual. But what if only the target on the other side bridging while us doesn’t? The bridged account is followable from our side, but we can’t interact with them directly. We must bridge ourself too to make that happened. And since it needs to follow the Bridgy Fed account, this operation is needing the user to opt-in manually, not like on the fly and call it a day.
And recently, people starts migrating to Bluesky after there’s an update to Twitter saying that their block function is now different and the TOS said that you can’t opt out from being their source for AI training. Which is sucks. I know, I’m more active on fediverse than on Bluesky, because previously I had nothing to do much on there. Except now, which more and more people starts to come in and posting here and there. Including most people I followed from Twitter. It’s nice to see I can finally enjoy Bluesky because there are so much people here that I can follow to, not to mention ZUN himself after his Twitter account got hacked.
And what I have been thinking is how to make those people federated to fediverse? Obviously if we use Bridgy Fed, we should ask them to follow @ap.brid.gy from Bluesky if they want. If they are not? Sadly, since each party from fediverse and Bluesky need to opt-in themselves by following the bridge account, not everyone gonna able to just connecting to each other. Yes, if they want to follow it. If they are not? Not to mention for most of people, this kind of thing is so confusing, and those people are just coming from a conventional social media like Twitter. Telling them technical stuff is not the best option to introduce them to alternative social media like Bluesky.
Fortunately, there are some of my friends convinced to try Bridgy Fed after they trying to be more active on both fediverse and Bluesky. And it works so great so far. Although there are not much from my friends to do this method, it’s nice to see things works well.
I maybe don’t understand the whole thing about it, especially the backend of it. But this bridge is definitely the coolest stuff I’ve ever seen this year. The bridging between Bluesky and Fediverse just started to take off since April this year based on the blog post. There’s a lot happened since then and the current situation seems looking good. This is maybe not that practical, especially for someone who still new to this, but it’s definitely a cool project to check out. I hope there’s a new update for this project to make sure we could use it even better.
