Show HN: I made a tool to port tweets to Bluesky mantaining their original date

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Tool purpose, features, and gaps

  • Ports tweets (including from downloaded archives) to Bluesky while preserving original dates; some link similar tools and competitors.
  • Users request:
    • Skipping video posts if they can’t be transferred cleanly.
    • Mass-delete option after migration.
    • Optional per-post suffix like “[Migrated from X]”.
  • Some want support for replies/RTs and Mastodon/ActivityPub import as well.

Backdating posts and timestamp integrity

  • Many are surprised Bluesky’s API allows arbitrary backdating.
  • Concerns:
    • Enables scams: fake “prediction” accounts for stocks, sports, lotteries.
    • Undermines historical integrity and early platform history.
  • Bluesky now shows both createdAt (client) and indexedAt (first seen) and flags unverified dates, but older posts predate that mechanism.
  • Some developers note that any consumer of the “firehose” must treat timestamps as unreliable and sort by ingestion time or reject extreme dates.

Verification, impersonation, and proofs

  • Worry: anyone could “migrate” someone else’s tweets and impersonate them.
  • Proposed mitigations:
    • Proving control of the original X account (challenge post).
    • Using Twitter archives, Wayback Machine, or blockchain time-attestation / zk proofs as external evidence.
  • Objections:
    • Archives aren’t signed; can be fabricated.
    • Twitter’s current API access is expensive/limited.
    • Strong verification clashes with AT Protocol’s decentralized, self-hosted trust model.

AT Protocol design and decentralization debate

  • Backdating is described as an intentional feature to support content portability and user-controlled repos (PDS).
  • Discussion of:
    • Separation of identity (DID / domain) from hosting (PDS) and indexing (AppView).
    • Trade‑off: you can reorder/delete posts, but timestamps can’t be globally trusted.
    • PDS operators effectively hold users’ signing keys unless users self-manage.
  • Debate whether Bluesky is “sufficiently decentralized” vs practically dependent on a large, centralized AppView.

Bluesky vs Mastodon and other platforms

  • Bluesky is seen as:
    • More convenient (single main service, global search, algorithmic feeds).
    • Having better identity portability than ActivityPub/Mastodon (where identity is tied to a server).
    • More attractive to developers due to a stable, free API.
  • Counterpoints:
    • Mastodon is more decentralized but fragmented and harder for average users (instance choice, search, dead instances).
    • Some argue ActivityPub could evolve comparable identity mechanisms but ecosystem migration is nontrivial.

Should we even migrate tweets?

  • Split opinions:
    • Some value historical/threaded content and treat Twitter as a blog they want to preserve.
    • Others welcome a blank slate, see past tweets as “brain farts,” and have deleted archives or regularly purge posts.
  • A few find the desire to carry everything over emotionally driven or excessive, while others liken it to migrating a blog between platforms.