Bridging the gap

The image shows the fediverse Wapuu is building a bridge from the Bluesky Space Station to the Fediverse Space Station.

The Fediverse is intended to be an interoperable, decentralized social network where users can connect across platforms and tools. In practice, though, the reality is more fragmented.

According to Wikipedia:

The majority of Fediverse platforms are based on free and open-source software, and create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol.

Still, networks like Bluesky, Nostr, and Diaspora take their own technical paths toward the same vision, which means the fediverse isn’t fully connected just yet.

Bridgy Fed

To help address this gap, Ryan Barrett (@snarfed.org) began developing Bridgy Fed, a tool designed to connect these otherwise separate networks:

Bridgy Fed connects web sites, the fediverse, and Bluesky. You can use it to make your profile on one visible in another, follow people, see their posts, and reply and like and repost them. Interactions work in both directions as much as possible.

With even more networks on the list.

While it’s not a native solution, it does help connect people today—and I really appreciate the perspective of Anuj Ahooja (@quillmatiq), CEO of A New Social, the organization behind Bridgy Fed:

The future of the open social web is people connecting with people no matter what technology they happen to choose. And if bridges and duct tape is what’s necessary, then we’ll continue building bridges, because it’s connections and community over everything.

You can easily connect your blog to Bluesky using Bridgy by following a few simple steps.

Bridge your Blog

You can connect your blog to Bluesky using any self-hosted WordPress site or a paid WordPress.com plan.

First, go to the ActivityPub settings and open the Screen Options at the top right. Enable the Advanced Settings checkbox and click Save.

This will reveal the Advanced tab in the settings, where you’ll find the Following User Interface option. Enable that as well.

Once this feature is active, you’ll be able to access the Following subpage.

To follow the Bluesky account, enter bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy into the input box on the left and click Follow. The account should appear in your list shortly. After a few minutes, your follow request will be accepted, and the account will follow your blog back.

You can verify the connection by checking your Followers list. From this point on, all your new blog posts will also be published on Bluesky. You’ll receive reactions to your posts and even follow requests from Bluesky users.

That’s it! All your upcoming posts will also be published on Bluesky, you will receive all reactions to your posts and even follow requests.

If you ever want to stop the bridge from publishing, simply unfollow the Bridgy account and remove it from your Followers list.

Happy cross-posting bridging :)

Be Aware

Even though following other accounts is now possible, there is currently no way to view their incoming posts. Aside from the specific use case described above, following others doesn’t offer much benefit at this stage. Please be cautious if you think you need to follow more people, as it may increase traffic to your site without a clear purpose.

We’ll let you know as soon as the full reader experience is implemented and will enable all necessary (currently hidden) features at that time.

Follow us!

As a proof of concept, you can now also follow our updates on Bluesky via @activitypub.blog.activitypub.blog.ap.brid.gy‬

Comments

47 responses to “Bridging the gap”

  1. Erik (ring2) Avatar

    @activitypub.blog leider erstzt das aus mehreren Gründen keine native Einbindung, bspw werden Änderunge und noch wichtiger gelöschte Posts nicht, oder immer noch angezeigt. Eine Bridge ist, putziges Maskottchen hin ider her, eine Notlösung.

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    1. Michael Henseler Avatar

      @ring2 @activitypub.blog Stimmt sicherlich, doch wenn ich aktuelle Blogbeiträge über Buffer etc. In die Social Media kommunizieren muss, habe ich dasselbe Problem. Auf diese Weise spare ich mir grds. einen Arbeitsschritt. Und ja, ich muss vor der Veröffentlichung sauber arbeiten, das stimmt. 😊

      Like

  2. ring2 Avatar

    What went wrong when I get this error mesg: Kann Konto „@stpop“ nicht folgen. Bitte überprüfe, ob das Konto existiert, und versuche es nochmal.?

    Like

    1. Matthias Pfefferle Avatar

      One thing first: There is no benefit of following accounts other than the bridge yet. We have not implemented a reader UI!

      What have you tried to add to the input field? I just tried it locally `stpop@stpauli.social` and it worked fine.

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  3. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

    @activitypub.blog Please don't use #AI images they incestuously regurgitate culture training its consumers to appreciate sterile statistical averages of all previous human culture, AI images cannot make anything truly new it will only train humans to judge the standard of their art by how it stacks up to "AI perfection" emotionless opinion-less slop

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    1. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog Should we hire human illustrators instead? What about the copyright status of the Wapuu character?

      When visual assets are needed (such as mascots or blog illustrations), do you think it's more appropriate to commission human illustrators instead of using AI-generated images?
      I want to support artists and uphold cultural integrity, but I’d also like to understand the expectations within the community regarding this.

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      1. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

        @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog Also, what’s the licensing situation with the Wapuu character?
        Would paying an artist to create custom artwork featuring Wapuu cause any issues with copyright or usage rights?

        What about hybrid workflows — for example, when a human creates the sketch and AI is only used for retouching or coloring?
        And is it fair to publicly invite artists to submit thumbnails, offer small compensation, or tag them for exposure and promotion?

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        1. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

          @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog If there is a #copyright problem commissioning a human there is a copyright problem commissioning an #AI and ig if ur using a hybrid workflow and no one can tell uve used an ai then the issue of complainers like me will go away + at least some majority percentage of the image is human inspired so I'd be halfway happy anyway

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          1. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

            @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog At the very least, the distinctive features of the Wapuu character were originally created by a human artist.

            Wapuu is distributed under the GPLv2 license, which allows anyone to modify or create derivatives for any purpose, including commercial use — freely.

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            1. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

              @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog Now, images generated with tools like Stable Diffusion or Midjourney exist in a legally ambiguous space when it comes to copyright. However, if the generated image intentionally incorporates visual elements from a GPL-licensed original, such as Wapuu, then the result is considered a derivative work and must comply with GPLv2 requirements.

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              1. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog GPLv2 requires the disclosure of source code when distributing derivatives. Typically, EXIF data or metadata are not considered “source.”
                However, in the context of AI-generated media, it could be argued that the prompt, seed, model, or workflow details form part of the source material and should be disclosed accordingly.

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                1. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                  @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog So, no — EXIF/metadata disclosure isn't strictly required.
                  But releasing your prompt, model info, and editable source files (e.g., .psd, .svg) aligns with the spirit of GPLv2 and supports transparency.

                  All in all, I wouldn’t say your criticism is entirely off base — there are important ethical concerns around AI art.
                  But in this particular case, I think it might not fully apply, given the clear licensing and the intent to respect those terms.

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                  1. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                    @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog I didnt criticise the copyright aspect I criticised the death of culture and art that ai tools represent, its the ultimate form of committee thinking, no drive no passion just statistical averages, clinical precision with no inspiration emotion or thought behind it. I think that as more of the art space is dominated by thinking this kind of art is "superior" because its cheaper and faster the more we lose our collective soul

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                    1. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog Even the most advanced LLMs or image generation models are ultimately just tools. Generative AI is a mirror of the user — what matters most is the quality of the question, and the creativity behind the prompt.

                      No matter how sharp the knife is, if the person holding it has no skill or thought, they’ll end up cutting their hand while trying to peel a potato.

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                    2. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog You can hand a scalpel to a chimpanzee, but you still wouldn’t call it a surgeon.
                      If AI-generated art feels soulless, maybe we should look at who's driving the prompt, not the engine.

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                    3. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog thats like saying that a product mass produced in a factory is soulless because someone pressed the button wrong. AI image generators are not tools because they can't be used to make decisions about how the image is created its whole point is that it makes decisions for you for "efficiency". If you had to guide an ai through every brush stroke it would have been faster to do it yourself.

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                    4. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog at the end of the day no matter how detailed your prompt is the ai will fill in the blanks with a statistical avg from everything that came before, that is not art because it is not inspired its just a sterile combination of everything, its like how when you mix all the colours you get a murky brown

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                    5. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog Regarding the pronoun discussion — English isn’t my first language, so I tend to follow standard grammar rules. That doesn’t reflect how I perceive or value animals. I actually raise chickens as companion animals, and I understand very well that animals are sentient beings. But I also eat chicken. It may be off-topic, but I hope that gives some context.

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                    6. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog As for AI — yes, I understand that the results involve randomness and a degree of black-box behavior, which technically makes it more than just a traditional “tool.” But unless you're deeply familiar with how denoising and generative models actually work, I’d rather not spiral into philosophical speculation. AI outputs can be exactly the same with identical prompts and seed values — determinism is possible. That’s important to acknowledge.

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                    7. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog Ok then its deterministically the same slop, uninspired statistical average from its training set, this is why I call it an incestuous regurgitation of the past, its nostalgia on steriods where nothign new can ever be created, only remixes of the old. This is not good for the collective psyche

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                    8. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog What I’m saying is that, in principle, it's possible to reproduce an AI-generated result solely from the EXIF data of the image file. That’s because the generation process can be deterministic — given the same prompt, model version, and seed, the output will be exactly the same.

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                    9. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog Of course, the number of possible combinations is effectively infinite — not in a quantum sense, but in the practical sense that we’d never be able to exhaust them, even if we generated images until the end of the universe.

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                    10. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog So yes, AI is deterministic, but it opens up a space of possibilities so vast that, for humans, it might as well be infinite. In that sense, AI is the first tool that truly gives humanity a grasp of infinity — or at least, the illusion of it.

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                    11. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog No its not infinite, it can only ever be derivative of its training data, a big space but its not creating anything new. all it can do is incestuously regurgitate what it has already seen. And i call it incestuous bc it is already training on its own output, model collapse is imminent

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                    12. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog You don’t realize that by disparaging AI—which is modeled after natural intelligence—you are ultimately insulting our own essence. Human creativity itself is rarely creation from nothing; it’s often derivative, remixing existing ideas to produce something new. AI is another tool in this continuum, expanding creative possibilities rather than ending them.

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                    13. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog “Isn't all human creativity also a recombination of past ideas? The difference is that AI can explore combinations at a scale no single human ever could — not to replace inspiration, but to multiply it.”

                      Anyway, I don’t feel the need to teach or convince you further, so I’ll leave it here.

                      Like

                    14. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog No human creativity is not just the recombination of old ideas, it is formed of lived experience, opinions, emotions, these are what direct the exploration of the output space, AI does none of this it picks a sterile direction that is the average of what came before if a robot with lived experiences starts to make art to reflect its understanding of those experiences I might start to agree with you

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                    15. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog You’re drawing a hard line between “lived experience” and “recombination,” but those aren’t separate processes — they’re intertwined. Our lived experiences are built on the things we’ve seen, read, heard, and felt before, all filtered and reassembled through memory and emotion.

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                    16. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog And while AI doesn’t yet have sensory memories or emotions in the human sense, it does reflect the lived experiences of countless humans through its training data — not as sterile averages, but as patterns distilled from an enormous diversity of human expression.

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                    17. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog If a robot needs to have personal sensory memories before you’ll call it creative, that’s a philosophical stance, not a technical inevitability. The boundary you’re defending may turn out to be much blurrier than you think, especially once embodied AI systems with their own sensors start integrating real-world experiences into their generative process.

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                    18. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog Yeah but rn thats not what were talking abt thats not how this image im commenting on was created. I'm here 2 criticise how it was used in this instance not say I know exactly how the tech is going 2 evolve in the future AI is trained & directly by humans who r alr v rich & powerful weve alr seen deepseek deny taiwan is a country, how else is the ai output you consume being maniuplated & censored 2 the benefit of the most powerful humans on Earth?

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                    19. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog My point is that the judgment you’re making about this image’s “lack of creativity” rests on a definition that’s already fuzzy. Even in this instance, the AI’s output still comes from human-generated experiences and ideas — the fact that it’s mediated by a model doesn’t erase that lineage.
                      Anyway, I hope this at least nudged your preconceptions a little — I’m not looking to drag this into an exhausting back-and-forth.

                      Like

                    20. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog that’s a different axis of criticism from whether the output is inherently “creative” or not. If the problem is who is training the models and what values they embed, then the target of critique should be those power structures, not the concept of AI-generated art itself.
                      Conflating the two just muddies the conversation — and makes it easier for the real culprits to hide behind the tech as a scapegoat.

                      Like

                    21. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog I defined exactly what I was talking abt in the first message: AI regurgitates a statistical average of what has already come before, whether u want 2 call taht creativity I dont care, but it takes the dynamic process of art & culture & squishes it all into a funnel of least resistance, sanitised, mass produced, with no personality or opinion. Its why 2 get ai image generators 2 appear 2 have any style at all you have 2 tell it 2 copy someone elses

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                    22. :mastodon: 김지운 Avatar

                      @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog I’m not interested in diving into art history, schools of thought, parody, homage, or plagiarism.
                      If you push a model with unconventional inputs, you can get results that go far beyond the average.

                      If you want to critique the current AI art ecosystem for relying on derivative prompts, I agree with you.
                      But that’s about user intent and the culture around the tool — not an immutable limitation of the medium itself.

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                    23. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog It is a limitation of ai image generators because they make images that approximate the training data. All prompting does is tell it which parts of its training data to pull from

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                    24. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog How would you like it if someone killed and ate you treat others as you'd like to be treated, those chickens trust you and you commit the ultimate betrayal when you kill them. If you understand they are thinking feeling beings who want to live and you kill them anyway do you realise you can get all essential nutrients on a plant based diet? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39923894 #vegan

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                    25. 🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat Avatar

                      @thaumiel999 @activitypub.blog Also chimps are "they" not "it" they're thinking feeling creatures with personality memory preferences fears and feel pain love grief and comfort, they are someone not something not an inanimate object and never "it" not calling other animals it is a simple thing we can do to subconsciously reduce #speciesism in the world

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        2. Lisa Bilbo Avatar

          @thaumiel999 @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog no copy right issues if you work with me I will give you all rights

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      2. Cj_Evelyn Avatar

        @thaumiel999 @ambiguous_yelp @activitypub.blog if you need any kind feel free contact me<3

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  4. Domingos Faria Avatar

    It’s working fine! Congratulations on your work! Suggestion: I think you also need to improve the plugin to allow direct messages, in order to change the handle in bluesky (via brid.gy).

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  5. Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐 Avatar

    @activitypub.blog @snarfed.org @quillmatiq I personally have zero interest in my fediverse posts being available to the billionaire-controlled commercial platforms. #nobridge If the landscape is fragmented, bridging is the cause of that fragmentation, not the cure for it.

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  6. Bridge WordPress and Bluesky – Herve Family Avatar

    […] @davew Bluesky users can already follow your blog on Bluesky if you use the ActivityPub plugin and if you configure it like so. […]

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