I feel like I may be missing something when it comes to BlueSky, or maybe both I and those trying it out are but in different ways. My understanding is that BlueSky is currently like the Mastodon Social instance is for Mastodon but of the AT Protocol under development, with the long term aim being that once their protocol is sufficiently developed to their liking, they’ll put out the version capable of federation for others to spin up their own instances with.
However, once they do that, won’t it basically create some of the same problems people already have with ActivityPub, i.e. instance choice, federation confusion, etc.?
What’s supposed to set it apart and address existing issues rather than reinvent things and add their own distinct issues?
What is the likelihood that you could set up a server to bridge the two protocols?
From what I’ve read of this, it’s basically already done. The developer is just waiting for AT Protocol federation. I’m not sure how to feel about how it works though, it’s got some quirks because of the differences in the protocols.
https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed
I’m working on a client/app called Agora that integrates bridges like bridgy-fed so that you don’t have to think about those quirks, you just search something like “aoc.bsky.social” on it while logged in to a Mastodon account, it’ll automatically pull up the bridged version of the account for you to follow.
https://agorasocial.app
Oh wow, that’s really cool! I’ll definitely take it for a spin. I’ve been thinking that something like this would be great.