A New Social (the nonprofit behind Bridgy Fed) has launched Bounce, a tool enabling users to migrate their follow graphs between Bluesky and Mastodon – two decentralized social networks operating on different protocols. This development addresses a significant gap in the open social web, allowing users to transition their social connections without losing followers.
Bounce operates by first moving a user’s Bluesky account to a bridged account that spans both networks, then transferring it to the user’s Mastodon account. This process also supports Pixelfed, an Instagram-like social app that runs on ActivityPub, like Mastodon. At launch, Bounce can migrate users from Bluesky to Mastodon or Pixelfed, but not the other way around. This limitation arises because Bluesky’s infrastructure currently only allows users to move off its servers, not to migrate back. Once Bluesky enables migrations into their servers, Bounce plans to support reverse migrations.
Bounce’s introduction is particularly timely for Bluesky users in Mississippi. The platform recently announced it would block its service in the state rather than comply with a new age assurance law that it considers overly invasive from a privacy standpoint and would require too many resources for Bluesky’s small team to manage. This has left Bluesky users in the state without access to the social network, highlighting the need for tools that would allow users to take their accounts elsewhere.
While Bounce is currently in beta and primarily aimed at early adopters and open web enthusiasts, it represents a significant step toward greater interoperability in the decentralized social media ecosystem. Users should be aware that once they migrate their account off of Bluesky, they won’t be able to use their Bluesky credentials to log into the app again or other AT Protocol-based services. The team is considering inviting non-Bluesky Personal Data Servers (PDSes) as a migration option in the future.
