Software developer Ryan Barrett found this out the hard way when he set out to connect the AT Protocol and ActivityPub with a bridge called Bridgy Fed.

Barrett planned to make the bridge opt-out by default, meaning that public Mastodon posts could show up on Bluesky without the author knowing, and vice versa.

In what one Bluesky user called “the funniest github issue page i have ever seen,” there was a heated debate over the opt-out default, which — like any good internet argument — included unfounded legal threats and devolved into bizarre personal attacks.

As a nonprofit, Mastodon’s appeal is that, unlike Instagram or Twitter or YouTube, it’s not controlled by a big corporation that needs to make its investors happy.

The ideological issues around Bridgy Fed are likely to continue stoking tension across these federated social networks as they increase their connection points.

“I am thinking and feeling deeply that however content moderation works on either side of the bridge, it needs to be at least as good as it is for native fediverse users, and vice versa,” Barrett said.

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