If you’re a Bluesky user, hello! This post is mostly aimed at Mastodon users, so you might want to read this other post instead, which is for you. It shows how you can give Mastodon users permission to follow your Bluesky account in two clicks, entirely within Bluesky. There’s no interaction with Mastodon involved, it’s 100% Bluesky, no software, no nothing. Thanks!
Did you know BlueSky and Mastodon users can follow each other? They can, through something called a Bridge.
And while the big rush from both Twitter and Facebook at the moment is to BlueSky, I’m also picking up a bunch of new people on Mastodon, which I continue to recommend preferentially.
Now, in some ways, Mastodon is not as turnkey as BlueSky. But the Federation – of which Mastodon is the largest member – has things like groups, longer posts, custom emojis, picture and video services, and most of all didn’t just get another $700M of the same kind of venture capital vulture investment that BlueSky just got, which is in these current days always the vector insert for enshittification.
Don’t get me wrong: BlueSky is better than Meta or Twitter, so if you’re leaving to go there, please, keep doing that! It’s much better, at least for now! And it sends a market message even if BlueSky gets tanked later.
But if you’re willing to be a tiny bit more adventurous, there’s Mastodon. And the even better news is that BlueSky and Mastodon can interoperate via a bridge, which means yes, if you go to Mastodon and some of your friends go to BlueSky, you can still follow each other and keep in contact without having two accounts.
Isn’t Federation amazing? With some help, it even works with BlueSky. Here’s how:
FIRST, you have to turn on the Mastodon-Bluesky bridge. This is what joins the networks and lets them talk to one another. Turning it on is one action, whether you’re on Mastodon or BlueSky.
If you’re on MASTODON:
Follow the account @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy
(If you don’t know how to do that: copy @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy into the search box, hit enter. The profile will come up; click “follow.”)
If you’re on BLUESKY:
Follow the account “@ap.brid.gy“
(If you don’t know how to find an account, here’s a direct link to its profile:
Click on the link, then click on the “follow” button at that page.)
Done.
Now, this doesn’t follow any specific people! It just turns on the bridge, which allows you to follow people on the other service, and allows people on the other service to follow you.
Unless you change accounts, you only have to do this once. It’s once per account you own. You don’t have to do each time you want to follow someone or anything like that. It’s one and done.
After you’ve turned on the bridge by doing this, you’re ready to talk on both networks with the same account.
NOW IT’S TIME FOR SECOND BREAKFAST
Okay, so you’re set up to follow people on the opposite service! Here’s how to do that.
If you’re on MASTODON (or anywhere in the Federation, really):
Accounts on BlueSky generally look like this when seen from Mastodon:
@[BlueSkyAccountName]@bsky.brid.gy
As an example, let’s take PopeHat, who is on BlueSky. His account is @kenwhite.bsky.social, or maybe just @kenwhite depending upon how you look at it. All you have to do is add “@bsky.brid.gy” to the BlueSky account name.
From Mastodon, that would be:
@kenwhite.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy
So if you use the Search box on Mastodon to look for:
@kenwhite.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy
…you’ll find his account profile as seen from Mastodon. Then, you can follow him by clicking the “Follow” button, same as anyone else, and you’re good to go!
If you’re on BLUESKY:
Accounts on Mastodon generally look like this when seen from BlueSky, and I’m sorry but here we go:
@[MastodonUserName].[FullMastodonDomainWithDots].ap.brid.gy
As an example, let’s take me, on Mastodon. My account name is longer than most because when I set it up I was a little bit of a dumbass. It is @moira@mastodon.murkworks.net and on BlueSky, that turns into this:
@moira.mastodon.murkworks.net.ap.brid.gy
That’s unpleasant, and I’m under the impression that BlueSky search is not fond of such constructions sometimes (I could be wrong, someone let me know!), but it should get you a profile you can follow.
However, if it doesn’t, there’s still a way. You can turn that into a profile URL directly, by taking away the “@” sign and adding https://bsky.app/profile/ to the front, so it looks like this:
https://bsky.app/profile/moira.mastodon.murkworks.net.ap.brid.gy
That will get you the BlueSky version of my Mastodon profile, with a Follow button, which you can use, same as for anyone else. Click on it, and you’re done.
Sorry it’s a bit of a mess, it’s mostly that BlueSky really isn’t so very well set up to handle anything that isn’t BlueSky and while it’ll do it, it’s … a little muddled. One might even say complicated. BUT IT WORKS! So.
Anyway, if you have comments on how I can improve this, please drop ’em. Right now, both services have real advantages over the other, not the least of which being BlueSky’s still-easier startup path and smoother UI, but also not the least of which is that Mastodon is much better at handling non-Mastodon media sources being in your timeline.
(This blog is pretty readable on Mastodon. But on BlueSky, it’s like two lines, some ellipses and a URL. BlueSky posts are so short, honestly, how do you live like that? xD And no custom emojis and no groups and no private lists? People talk about Mastodon being less than complete – and to be clear, it is – but dang, team. xD )
So with Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) changing to Maga and legalising mass harassment of LGBT people and misogyny targeting of women across all its services, if you’re in a mood not to reward that? Well, there’s more than one place you can go without losing all of your friends.
C’mon over. Shit ain’t perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better here than there.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
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