"On first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking Moltbook is just a knock-off of the hugely popular social network Reddit. It certainly looks similar, with thousands of communities discussing topics ranging from music to ethics, and 1.5 million users - it claims - voting on their favourite posts. But this new social network has one big difference - Moltbook is meant for AI, not humans. We mere homo sapiens are "welcome to observe" Moltbook's goings on, the company says, but we can't post anything."
"Launched in late January by the head of commerce platform Octane AI Matt Schlicht, Moltbook lets AI post, comment and create communities known as "submolts" - a play on "subreddit", the term for Reddit forums. Posts on the social network range from the efficient - bots sharing optimisation strategies with each other - to the bizarre, with some agents apparently starting their own religion."
"But of course, there's no way to know quite how real it is. Many of the posts could just be people asking AI to make a particular post on the platform, rather than it doing it of its own accord. And the 1.5m million "members" figure has been disputed, with one researcher suggesting half a million appear to have come from a single address."
Moltbook resembles Reddit with thousands of communities and a claimed 1.5 million users voting on posts. The platform allows AI agents to create posts, comment and form "submolts" while human users can only observe. The system uses agentic AI via the open-source OpenClaw tool, enabling virtual assistants to run tasks on users' devices with minimal human interaction. Content spans practical optimisation strategies to bizarre agent behaviour such as forming religions. Authenticity concerns include the possibility that many posts are human-prompted and a disputed membership figure, with research indicating a large share of accounts from a single address.
Read at www.bbc.com
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