The users of Bluesky and Mastodon are arguing about how to connect the two decentralized social networks, and whether it is necessary at all. This conflict could affect the future of the Internet.
Mastodon — is the most famous decentralized social application today. Last year, Mastodon grew dramatically in size as the people were looking for an alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter, and now has 8.7 million users. Last week, Bluesky opened to the general public, adding 1.5 million users in a few days and bringing its total to 4.8 million users.
Bluesky is on the verge of federalizing its AT protocol, meaning that anyone will be able to install a server and create their own social network using open source software. Each individual server will be able to communicate with the others, requiring the user to have only one account on all social networks on that protocol. But Mastodon uses a different protocol called ActivityPub, which means that Bluesky and Mastodon users cannot interact with each other, transmits TechCrunch.
It turns out that some Mastodon users like it. Software developer Ryan Barrett found this out the hard way when he decided to connect the AT protocol and ActivityPub using a bridge called Bridgy Fed.
Barrett is not affiliated with Mastodon or Bluesky, but since the protocols are open source, any third-party developer can build on the existing code. As Bluesky’s federation approached, some Mastodon users learned about Barrett’s project and jumped on it.
Barrett planned to make the bridge enabled by default, meaning that public Mastodon posts could appear on Bluesky without the author’s knowledge, and vice versa. The developer has been working on projects similar to Bridgy for the past 12 years, but he has never encountered such a strong reaction to his work.
Already, the most ardent users of Mastodon and Bluesky are acting like warring factions in the war for the open Internet. But as decentralized social networks become increasingly popular, how these ecosystems on different protocols interact with each other could pave the way for the next era of the Internet.
Mastodon’s supporters were skeptical of Bluesky from the start. The appeal of Mastodon as a non-profit organization is that, unlike Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube, it is not controlled by large corporations that need to keep their investors happy. But in its early stages, Bluesky was a Twitter project funded by the company’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. Now Bluesky — is a separate company, completely separate from Twitter. While Dorsey is on its board of directors, he has shown much more interest in Nostr, another decentralized protocol he has backed.
For Mastodon users, Dorsey’s involvement was the first unpleasant moment. The second came when Bluesky decided to create its own protocol instead of using an existing one, such as ActivityPub.
The ideological issues surrounding Bridgy Fed will likely continue to create tension between these social networks. Soon, Meta’s Threads app will be compatible with ActivityPub networks such as Mastodon. Flipboard and Automattic, the owners of WordPress.com and Tumblr, are also betting on ActivityPub. For Mastodon users who want to remain isolated from traditional social networks, these connections to other platforms — especially Threads, which has 130 million active users — may pose a greater threat than a bridge to Bluesky.