Bridge as a service...

2025-08-13 13:56:28

julian

julian@community.nodebb.org

Reflecting on justbsocial.eu's recent launch, I wonder whether @anewsocial@mastodon.social is thinking about creating a bridge as a service product to connect existing social networks to the fediverse.

Having them start from scratch is a barrier in many ways!

@quillmatiq@mastodon.social

bridgyfed fediverse activitypub

2025-08-13 17:15:23

Anuj Ahooja

quillmatiq@mastodon.social

@julian It's something @snarfed.org and I have discussed a few times, but it's a huge project to take on, and we'd probably wait until someone has a real need for it. We've spoken to a few partners, and everyone is good using our instance atm, but we know the steps we need to take to make it happen.

NB: We make it really easy for instances to set up a bridging switch + default custom domains already: https://fed.brid.gy/docs#bluesky-handle-api

@anewsocial

2025-08-13 17:17:12

Anuj Ahooja

quillmatiq@mastodon.social

@julian All that said, one of my fears is a centralized bridge, so I *would* like to do this at some point if we have bandwidth.

@snarfed.org @anewsocial

2025-08-13 18:16:45

julian

julian@community.nodebb.org

@quillmatiq@mastodon.social thanks! The general context behind it was that I'm doing some outreach to local networks and occasionally I see attempts at forming digital spaces. It's one thing to tell a community "hey set up a forum or mastodon or similar", but it's another thing altogether then they have an existing product and I have to say "hey now you have to implement this protocol, good luck!"

2025-08-13 21:13:04

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Anuj Ahooja This makes me wonder if a decentralised, anyone-can-host-it third-party bridge that's only a bridge would be feasible.

Of course, it'd be the easiest to integrate such a bridge directly into Fediverse server software. But we've only got so many multi-protocol Fediverse server applications right now already, and the only one that's still occasionally adding new protocols or even a bridge is Friendica. It is therefore the only Fediverse server software that can connect to Bluesky without Bridgy Fed.

CC: @A New Social

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Bluesky

2025-08-13 21:20:43

julian

julian@community.nodebb.org

@snarfed.org@fed.brid.gy I wanted to tag you but I wasn't sure which account to tag

2025-08-13 21:32:39

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

This won't work with all social networks. It definitely won't work with Facebook (let's disregard that next to nobody in today's Fediverse would want Facebook to connect to the Fediverse).

Friendica actually introduced a Facebook connector that served like a kind of remote control for an existing Facebook account as early as 2011. It worked much like Friendica's Bluesky connector works today: You could post to all your contacts at once, regardless of where they were, be it Friendica, diaspora*, StatusNet, Twitter, Facebook or wherever. And your Facebook friends showed up amongst all your other connections.

I think it was in 2015 that Facebook took active countermeasures against exactly that.

Using this (optional per Friendica node) connector made it necessary for the Friendica node admin to be registered on Facebook as a developer so that they got access to the required API. So what Facebook did was change the TOS for developers: Their applications were no longer allowed to extract data from Facebook, only send data to Facebook. Otherwise their developer status and their API access was revoked, or even their entire Facebook account was terminated, rendering the Friendica-to-Facebook connector on the respective node useless.

For a while, some Friendica node admins still ran the old, bidirectional connector. They apparently didn't care whether they'd get caught; they seemed willing to burn their Facebook accounts for that. Others switched to a newly-created connector that only worked towards Facebook. Others again gave up the Facebook connection entirely, relieving their nodes of an immense load in the process.

Not much later, the connection between Friendica and Facebook was history entirely because it simply wasn't any useful anymore.

If Facebook hasn't let Friendica fully connect for a decade, I don't think it'll let anything else in the Fediverse connect now.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Facebook