One of the central promises of open social media services is interoperability—the idea that wherever you personally decide to post doesn’t require others to be there just to follow what you have to say. Think of it like a radio broadcast: you want to reach people and don’t care where they are or what device they’re using. For example, in theory, a Bluesky user can follow someone on Mastodon or Threads without having to create a Mastodon or Threads account. But these systems are still a work in progress, and you might need to tweak a few things to get it working correctly.
Right now, broadcasting your message across social platforms can be a funky experience at best, deliberately broken up by oligopolists. The idea of the open web was baked into the internet via protocols like HTML and RSS that made it easy for anyone to visit a website or follow most blogs. The fact social media isn’t similarly open reflects an intentional choice to privatize the internet.
Bridging and managing your posts so they’re viewable outside a singular source is part of the broader philosophy of POSSE, short for Post Own Site Syndicate Elsewhere (sometimes its Post Own Site, Share Everywhere). Instead of managing several accounts across different services, you post once to one primary site (which might be your personal website, or just one social media account), then set it up so it automatically publishes everywhere else. This way, it doesn’t matter where you or your audience is, and they’re not walled off by account registration requirements.
We’ll come back around to POSSE at the end of this post, but for now, let’s assume you just want your current main open social media account to actually have a chance to reach the most people it can.
Why Post to the Open Social Web
Because the Fediverse and ATmosphere use different protocols, we need to use a third-party tool so accounts can communicate with each other. For that, we’ll need a bridge. As the name suggests, a bridge can connect one social media account to another, so you can post once and spread your message across several places. This isn’t just some niche concept: major blogging platforms like WordPress and Ghost integrate posting to the Fediverse.
Bridging is an important facet of POSSE, but also something more people should consider, even if they don’t run their own websites. For example, if you don’t want to create a Threads account just to interact with your one friend who uses that platform, you shouldn’t have to. The good news is, you don’t. There are several bridging services, like Fedisky, RSS Parrot, and pinhole, but Bridgy Fed is currently the simplest to use, so we’ll focus on that.
How to Post to Bluesky from Mastodon
From your Mastodon account (or other Fediverse account, for simplicity’s sake we’ll stick to Mastodon throughout), search for the username @[email protected] and follow that account. Once you do, the account will follow you back and you’ll be bridged and people can find you from their Bluesky account. You should also get a DM with your bridged username. If you don’t see the @[email protected] user when you search, your Mastodon instance may be blocking the bridging tool.
Threads users who have enabled Fediverse sharing will be able to find you with your standard Mastodon username (ie, @[email protected]), but if they haven’t enabled sharing, they will not be able to see your account. While this search is still a beta feature, you might find it easier to share the full URL, which would look like this: https://www.threads.net/fediverse_profile/@[email protected]
People on Bluesky can find you by: Either searching for your Mastodon username, or if that doesn’t work, @your_user_name.instance.ap.brid.gy. For example, if your username is @[email protected], it would appear as @eff.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy.
An example of a Mastodon username from the Bluesky web client.
How to Post to Mastodon and Bluesky from Threads
Yes, Threads is technically on the Fediverse, and you can bridge your Threads account to Mastodon or Bluesky (unless you’re in Europe, where the feature is disabled), but it’s a different process than on Bluesky and Mastodon.
- Open Settings > Account > Fediverse Sharing and set the option to “On.” This will make your posts visible to Mastodon (or other Fediverse) users, and vice versa.
- Once the Fediverse sharing is enabled, you’ll likely need to wait a week, then you can bridge to Bluesky. Search for and follow the
@[email protected]account (it may take some digging to find it, but if that doesn’t work you can try visiting the profile page directly.
People on Mastodon (or other Fediverse accounts) and Bluesky can find you by: Mastodon users can find you at, @[email protected] while Bluesky users will find you at, @your_threads_username.threads.net.ap.brid.gy (seriously, that will be the username). Note that some Mastodon instances may block Threads users entirely.
An example of a Threads username from the Mastodon web client.
An example of a Threads username from the Bluesky web client.
How to Post to Mastodon and Threads from Bluesky
From your Bluesky (or other ATProto) account, search for the username, “@ap.brid.gy” and follow that account. Once you do, the account will follow you back and you’ll be bridged, so people can follow you from Mastodon or other Fediverse accounts. You should also get a DM with your bridged username.
People on Mastodon (or other Fediverse account) and Threads can find you by: Your username will appear as @[email protected]. For example, if your Bluesky username is @[email protected], it would appear as @[email protected].
An example of a Bluesky username from the Mastodon web client.
How to Post Everywhere from Your Own Website
You can bridge more than social media accounts. If you have your own website, you can bridge that too (as long as it supports microformats and webmention, or an Atom or RSS feed. If you have a blog, there’s a good chance you’re already good to go). When you do so, the bridged account will either post the full text (or image) of whatever you post to your personal site, or a link to that content, depending on how your website is set up. You’ll also probably want to log into your Bridgy user page so you can manage the account.
Where people can find your bridged account: Usually, a user can just search for your website’s URL on their decentralized social network of choice, or enter it on the Bridgy Fed page. But if that doesn’t work, they can try @[email protected] from Mastodon or @yourdomain.com.web.brid.gy from Bluesky.
An example of a bridged website username in the Mastodon web client.
How Your Account Username Looks on Each Platform
You’re Bound to Run Into Some Quirks
- Sometimes messages take a little while to crossover between networks, and sometimes they don’t crossover at all.
- You can’t log into a bridged account like a regular account, but Bridgy Fed does provide some tools to see incoming notifications and recent activity in case they’re not coming through properly.
- ActivityPub and ATProto don’t have the same feature set, so you will have certain capabilities for one account you might not have in another. For example, you can edit posts on Mastodon, but not on Bluesky. If you edit a post that’s bridged from Mastodon to Bluesky, the Bluesky post will not be updated.
- Replies can sometimes get lost, especially if the person (or people) replying to you doesn’t have sharing turned on.
- Ownership of accounts can get weird. For example, if you post to your own website and use a tool like WordPress or Ghost for federation (more info below), you don’t necessarily get access to a “normal” social media account, with a standard login and password.
- And more! This is still a work in progress that has some technical quirks, but it’s improving all the time, and it’s best to keep telling yourself that troubleshooting is part of the fun.
Other Cool Stuff You Can Do
As mentioned up top, there’s a lot more you can do, and an increasing number of tools are making this process simpler. Bridgy Fed is one way to post to more places from a single account, but it’s far from the only way to do so. Here are just a few examples.
- Micro.blog is a paid service where you can blog from your own domain name, then post automatically to Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, Tumblr, Nostr, LinkedIn, Medium, Pixelfed, and Flickr.
- Ghost is a blogging and newsletter platform that offers direct integration with the Fediverse, as well as support for Bluesky. WordPress offers the option to join the Fediverse through a community plugin. Other newsletter platforms, like Buttondown, also have plans for federation.
- Surf.social is a landing page and social media utility where you can show off all your various accounts (Federated or not). From the reader point of view, you can follow one publications numerous types of posts in one place. For example, 404 Media’s Surf.social feed includes its YouTube feed, podcast feed, and its journalist’s social media posts.
- If you think these new handles are a bit ugly, you can use a custom domain for Bluesky or fediverse account from your website.
Of course, there are plenty of other tools, blogging platforms, and other utilities out there to help facilitate posting and bridging accounts, with new ones coming along every day.
With proper support, time, and effort, eventually we will all be able to seamlessly interact across platforms, take our follows and followers to other services when a platform no longer suits our needs, and interact with a variety of web content regardless of what platform hosts it. Until then, we still need to do some DIY work, support the services we want to succeed, and push for more platforms and services to support federated protocols.
