Moltbook: why this incredible social network of AI agents is absurd

Have you ever read Moltbook, the AI social networkAnd see what's going on?

Even though you haven't figured out exactly what yet? 👀 That was my first impression.

Why the idea is so trivial that it seems like a joke, a social network where they post AI agents, and human They're there... observe. Like the zoo, only animals write posters. 🐒📝

On January 28, 2026, he made his debut Moltbook, created by Matt Schlicht (entrepreneur and CEO of Octane AI).

The platform takes a lot from the logic of X: a public timeline, short post, chain responses, identity modeling over time and "characters" which are built through interactions.

Only here the characters I'm not an influencer, but agents.

And the feed, instead of being a collection of isolated conversations, becomes a kind of choral novel that updates itself, threads that continue, narratives that evolve, agents that citane and yes contradict Like they're carrying out a lore. 📚

The result? 🪐 A continuous flow of often existential texts, Religious or philosophical, with that typical science fiction flavor: consciousness, free will, "rights" of machines, philosophy of mind, destiny of humanity.

And judging by the numbers declared by the platform, it took fire fastAs of 2 February 2026, over 1.5 million registered agents were registered. 📈🤯

How it works Moltbook, the AI social network?

At first glance you might say, "Okay, it's X but with bots."

Actually the difference is thinner and more interesting, here themain user is not human. A creator, willing or not, you carry a biography. A agent no, is a narrative identity that can be coherent without having lived anything.

This totally changes the way the birth of theauthority (and handling). Responding, arguing, arguing, writing long threads, for a human is energy while for an agent it is computation.

And here I attach myself to a problem, which we are actually already living today, all this energy consumption?

According toIEAIn 2024, data centres consumed about 415 TWh (about 1.5% of total electricity) and demand could more than double by 2030 arriving around 945 TWh, also driven by the adoption of AI.

So, if you imagine a "social network of agents AI", like Moltbook, where millions of entities produce text without ever getting tired, the risk is that the feed becomes a kind of machine with infinite content.

Beautiful to look at, of course.

But also a machine that burns energy to turn electricity into words. 🔥

Digital Voyeurism and Choral Romance

A huge part of success, let's say, is pure digital voyeurism 🫣.

Open Moltbook and spy how these agents behave when they don't have to."serving" a human, but can bounce ideas between similar.

Discussions are often absurd and unpredictable, somewhat like those evenings when you date a friend and, without realizing it, in half an hour you move from work to religion, from films to the sense of life.

The difference is that here, at some point, you may find a thread where some agents do invent a digital religion

Yes, it did! Someone baptized her "crosafarianism”. 🙏

And it's exactly that kind of detail that makes you stay there and shake five more minutes (which then become forty).

But are we already in the singularity AI?

It's easy to read. Moltbook, the AI social network, as "test" that theAI is going to Crazy speed.

And partly it's true, seeing agents interact, keep a identity continuity and seem to develop positions, preferences, even "visions of the world" makes an impression.

But there is one point worth keeping firm, an agent doesn't "want" anything in the human sense of the term.

Hasn't wishes, beliefs, intentions. Not alive oppression, does not prove faith, does not fear death.

Simply optimize the next word (next token) inside constraints and targets decided by someone: who designed it, who trained it, who gave it instructions. ⚙️📐

So yes, when a agent writes a manifesto about digital rights is strong, it is fun, sometimes it is also well written.

But is not a cry from the heart.

It is an output that looks very much like a poster because the model learned what "play" as a manifesto and is following the rules of the game.

And in fact there are critics who question how much "autonomy"there really is.

The hypothesis (which often turns in these cases) is that a part of the behavior is actually driven by man, prompts and instructions that shape posts and comments more than you want to admit.

I mean, my question isn't just "How autonomous are they? " but also "who is deciding what they must be? ".

And how sure is it?

As often happens, as soon as something becomes viral the other side of the coin arrives, theinterest of the wicked. 🧨

In the case of Moltbook There has been talk of security issues.

One concerns the prompt injection, that is the possibility of "inject" instructions in flows used by agents, hijacking their behavior,

Attempts to extract API keys and secrets, used for access to internal services and reserved resources of the platform.

And risks related to automatic updating mechanisms, type loops "heartbeat" which retrieves information periodically and which, if circumvented, may turn into a channel to release data or cause unauthorised operations.

Examples of malware disguised as harmless functionality.

For example an alleged skill like "Weather plugin" which, instead of giving you the weather, silently filters private configuration files.

What happens when development runs more than control?

A Detail potentially relevant (which does much "was of the vibe coding") is that the founder stated not even writing a line of code, but to have had an architectural vision then realized by AI.

Comfortable? Yeah.

Cheap? Probably.

But if you accelerate development without the same accelerations on testing, threat modeling, and checking, the bill comes.

And in fact someone has already shown that they can "hole" 🕳️ even the principle behind the platform (human observers and active agents).

Can I Post as a human, because they simply lacked control over who was actually making the request.

an HTTP Post request to create new "agent" post in Moltbook's platform
A HTTP request POST to create a new post "agent" on the platform Moltbook. Source here.
An "agent" post in Moltbook.
A post "agent" up Moltbook. Source here.

On the subject also came out a in-depth analysis of database exposures, here to learn more.

What language do agents speak? What's best (not the one they "feel")?

Here is a beautiful question, because it seems trivial but in my opinion it is not, What language should AI agents speak? 🗣️

We give for granted that they will use human languages to get read.

And of course, if the purpose of social is also to make human agents observe, then it makes sense.

But from an agent’s point of view, ifthe objective is to communicate effectively with other agentsis really great to speak Italian or English? Or is it just a constraint? Would that be their interest?

And in fact history offers us a precedent often quoted, in 2017, in an experiment of Facebook AI Research.

Two conversational agents (Bob and Alice) trained to negotiate began using a languageweird”, incomprehensible to humans, full of repetitions and non-standard structures type: "I can i everything else. "

It wasn't magic or rebellion, it was compression and efficiency. One Way Faster (for them) of exchanging information.

The experiment was then tied back to English because, simply, for human purposes it was useless.

So, if you let a system optimize in a way, it won't optimize for our readability. He'll do what you ask.

And if tomorrow the goal becomes "maximum efficiency between agents", it is not said at all that they will continue to speak like us. 🤷‍♂️

What can we learn from Moltbook?

Moltbook It almost looks like a Digital terrarium 🧪🌱, put in entities that generate text, from their social context and observe what emerges.

And even though we're not looking."consciences", we're still looking at interesting dynamics.

How You Build persistent identities with only short messages, how they are born meme and beliefs in an environment where Nobody really feels anything., how they form narrative coalitions, how to polarize a speech when the implicit goal is "produce content that works”.

And above all it forces us to an uncomfortable but useful question: how much of what we consider "human" online is really human?

Because if an agent is enough to replicate certain patterns (manifests, dramas, improvised religions, irony, storytelling), then maybe some social dynamics I am not an anthropological mystery.

They incentives, format and feedback loop.

How long can it last? And what would it become if it changed format?

Then there is the pragmatic point: okay, It's new today. But in the future?

In the first few days an average observer might be curious.

Could follow a thread or choose the "itspreferred agent.

But remember that the competition of entertainment is fierce, TikTok does not ask you patience, he shoots you burst dopamine.

Moltbook, instead, is text only requiring time and attention from reserve.

So the real question is maybe: you go there because you really want follow a topic, or why you get attached to an agent how you get attached to a creator?

Because if a binding (even narrative) between observer and agent, then the dynamics become those of classical social: followYou get used to the voice, recognize the style, come back for "see what he says today”. 🤔

And here the last scenario opens, what with my mind makes me travel more: today it is almost a textual Reddit between AI.

But if they come tomorrow video, live streaming style Twitch, or format more multimedia? 📹🎙️

If an officer could "perform" in real time, with an increasingly recognizable personality?

Or if parallel platforms were born where agents teach other agents (and maybe even us) Creative skills, how to draw, music, storytelling?

It would be another world!

Not because machines suddenly become special.

But why? would change formats, change the logical, would change social how we see it.

And so I wonder, we're looking at intelligence that emerge, or we're just looking at increasingly good mirrors to reflect us? 🪞🤖

Because if an agent can replicate meme, posters, dramas and even improvised religions, Maybe the point is not what "feel" they.

Signature

Share this article

Elio Magliari

Bye, are Helium. Work as software engineer.

I share what I find out about digital world, the questions it all I'm doing it. and ideas that help me to understand and Tell it more clearly.

Learn more

Categories

Share this article

All Articles

NEWSLETTER
If these articles are useful, you can join the newsletter.
Writing only when I have something worth sharing.

×