alt Hacker NewsIt's not gated. I can still talk to people fully in the Blacksky stack and interact with their public posts.
The usual pattern is like that Alex Norris comic:
"you do not fit in here"
"okay we will make our own place"
"why are you excluding us"
"oh no"
Except here they can stay connected with the broader Atmosphere but engage on their own terms.
I might be missing something about the protocol, but when logged into BlueSky, I can't interact with BlackSky accounts at all. I specifically have to have an account there to even follow a BlackSky account.
I'm not as familiar with ATProto as ActivityPub, but following someone from another Mastodon instance, for example, is seamless as long as I'm logged in to the account I have on my home instance.