As I’ve mentioned a few times recently, Bluesky is my preferred social media site; I’ve quit Twitter/X and I’m not spending so much time on Mastodon or Threads at present. This means that I can’t easily follow users on those platforms – unless they’re using Bridgy Fed.
Bridgy Fed is a bridge between Bluesky’s Atmosphere network, and ActivityPub, which is used by Mastodon and other Fediverse clients, including Threads if you enable that option. I’ve set it up to work both ways with my Bluesky and Mastodon accounts, as follows:
| Service | My Fediverse profile URL | My Bluesky profile URL |
|---|---|---|
| Mastodon | https://mastodonapp.uk/@neilturner (original) | https://bsky.app/profile/neilturner.mastodonapp.uk.ap.brid.gy (Bridged) |
| Bluesky | https://fed.brid.gy/bsky/neilturner.me.uk (Bridged) | https://bsky.app/profile/neilturner.me.uk (original) |
How to enable Bridgy Fed
To enable it for your account, all you have to do is follow @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy on Mastodon (or another Fediverse service that supports ActivityPub), or follow @ap.brid.gy on Bluesky. It’s opt-in – Bridgy Fed will not create a bridge username for you unless you follow it.
It works reasonably well, within the various limits of each service. Bluesky, for example, has a 300 character limit for posts (or skeets) whereas Mastodon has a 500 character limit for posts (or toots). Indeed, some other Fediverse clients don’t have character limits at all. What this means is that any posts from the Fediverse that are bridged into Bluesky which are over 300 characters will get truncated by Bridgy Fed when cross-posted. You’ll get the first 260 characters or so, and then a link back to the original Fediverse post.
Re-skeeting and re-tooting will also work, if you’re re-skeeting or re-tooting someone else who uses Bridgy Fed, which is quite cool. Otherwise, Reskeets won’t be shared on the Fediverse and Retoots won’t be shared on Bluesky. Remember, Bridgy Fed is opt-in so people who haven’t consented to use it won’t find their skeets or toots being broadcast elsewhere.
As for Threads? Threads users who share their post to the Fediverse can be followed by Mastodon users, but it’s not fully integrated. I don’t think it’s possible, at the time of writing, for Threads users to follow other Fediverse users, and so it presumably isn’t possible to use Bridgy Fed with Threads. I haven’t tried however; whilst I post to Threads occasionally, I’m not a significant user.
