Bluesky and Mastodon users are debating how to combine the two decentralized social networks, and whether it is necessary at all. This conflict could affect the future of the Internet.

Mastodon is currently the most famous decentralized social application. Mastodon has grown dramatically in size over the past year as people sought an alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter, and now has 8.7 million users. Bluesky went public last week, adding 1.5 million users in a few days and bringing its total to 4.8 million users.

Bluesky has added nearly 1 million users since its public launch

Bluesky is on the verge of federalizing its AT protocol, meaning that anyone will be able to set up 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 of this protocol. But Mastodon uses a different protocol called ActivityPub, which means Bluesky and Mastodon users can’t interact with each other, TechCrunch reports.

It turns out that some Mastodon users like it. Software developer Ryan Barrett found this out firsthand when he decided to combine 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. With Bluesky’s federalization looming, some Mastodon users found out about Barrett’s project and attacked him.

Barrett planned to make the bridge enabled by default, meaning Mastodon’s public messages could appear on Bluesky without the author’s knowledge, and vice versa. The developer has been working on similar Bridgy projects for the past 12 years, but he has never faced such a tumultuous response to his work.

Already, the most avid users of Mastodon and Bluesky are operating as rival factions in the war for the open Internet. But as decentralized social networks become more popular, how these ecosystems on different protocols interact with each other could set the stage for the next era of the Internet.

Mastodon supporters were initially skeptical of Bluesky. 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 make 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. Bluesky is now a separate company, completely separate from Twitter. Although Dorsey is on its board of directors, he has shown much greater interest in Nostr, another decentralized protocol he has backed.

For Mastodon users, Dorsey’s participation 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.

Ideological issues surrounding the Bridgy Fed are likely to continue to create tension between these social networks. Meta’s Threads app plans to be compatible with ActivityPub networks like Mastodon soon. Flipboard and Automattic, owners of WordPress.com and Tumblr, are also betting on ActivityPub. For Mastodon users who want to remain isolated from traditional social networks, these ties to other platforms, especially Threads, which has 130 million active users, may pose more of a threat than a bridge with Bluesky.

Join the competition of ITS authors! Win cool prizes from our Logitech partners – professional gaming steering wheel and low-profile gaming keyboards.