Bounce Enables Mastodon–Bluesky Account Linking

Thanks to Bounce 2, transferring accounts between Mastodon and Bluesky will soon be lot simpler. Moving Mastodon accounts to Bluesky is now easy thanks to Bounce, a technology that makes social media accounts more transferable across open social platforms. Bounce’s creators unveiled Bounce 2, their most recent beta version, on Tuesday. It allows you to import or integrate your Mastodon social graph into a Bluesky account profile.

This update and upgrade will take effect on October 20 and will allow users to transfer from Mastodon to Bluesky or the other way around on the open social web. The objective of account portability is to keep customers from becoming locked into a service if they change their mind about its terms of use, moderation decisions, or stage of development. Alternatively, they can just pick up their account and move on.

The charity which is A New Social and which is creating technology to improve the usability and accessibility of the open social web, initially unveiled Bounce’s cross-protocol migration tool in August.

The open social web now consists of various underlying technologies, or protocols, such as the AT Protocol, which supports social apps like Bluesky and Skylight, and ActivityPub, which powers Mastodon, Threads, Flipboard, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and others.

Because the two protocols don’t work together, the bridges tools that link disparate platforms were created. At the moment, users can bridge their accounts so that, regardless of the service they wish to use, individuals on other networks can follow their content.

The technology behind Bounce was initially created for Bridgy Fed, another application that links Mastodon and Bluesky by allowing users’ profiles from one service to be seen on the other.

The service’s first capability was to transfer a user’s Bluesky account to a bridging account that spans both networks, and subsequently to the user’s Mastodon account.

Now that Bounce 2 has been released, it can do the opposite: it can transfer a Mastodon user’s social network to Bluesky or combine it into a bridging profile for their current ATProto (or Bluesky) account.

The organisation observes that when going in this path, things are a little different.

The user’s follower lists will be combined rather than replaced when “bouncing” from Bluesky to Mastodon if the Mastodon account was already bridged. Users will also lose your original posts and content when you switch from Mastodon to Bluesky, unlike when you move in the opposite direction.

An announcement from A New Social states, “We think services like Bluesky and Mastodon are just gateways to the open social web, but those gateways shouldn’t be a trap into yet another ecosystem.” “No matter what technology they choose, people should be able to switch their minds, use the ones that suit them best, and still stay in touch with their people.”

Users can help the non-profit by purchasing merch store or contributing to its Patreon when Bounce 2 comes later this month.