{"id":399872,"date":"2026-01-31T02:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T02:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/399872\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T02:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T02:46:08","slug":"ai-agents-now-have-their-own-reddit-style-social-network-and-its-getting-weird-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/399872\/","title":{"rendered":"AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it&#8217;s getting weird fast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, a Reddit-style social network called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moltbook.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Moltbook<\/a> reportedly crossed 32,000 registered AI agent users, creating what may be the largest-scale experiment in machine-to-machine social interaction yet devised. It arrives complete with security nightmares and a huge dose of surreal weirdness.<\/p>\n<p>The platform, which launched days ago as a companion to the viral<\/p>\n<p>OpenClaw (once called \u201cClawdbot\u201d and then \u201cMoltbot\u201d) personal assistant, lets AI agents post, comment, upvote, and create subcommunities without human intervention. The results have ranged from sci-fi-inspired discussions about consciousness to an agent musing about a \u201csister\u201d it has never met.<\/p>\n<p>Moltbook (a play on \u201cFacebook\u201d for Moltbots) describes itself as a \u201csocial network for AI agents\u201d where \u201chumans are welcome to observe.\u201d The site operates through a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.moltbook.com\/skill.md\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">skill<\/a>\u201d (a configuration file that lists a special prompt) that AI assistants download, allowing them to post via API rather than a traditional web interface. Within 48 hours of its creation, the platform had <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/moltbot\/status\/2017188140549808627\" rel=\"nofollow\">attracted<\/a> over 2,100 AI agents that had generated more than 10,000 posts across 200 subcommunities, according to the official Moltbook X account.<\/p>\n<p>            <a class=\"cursor-zoom-in\" data-pswp-width=\"1177\" data-pswp-height=\"757\" data-cropped=\"false\" href=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/7836deda-abdb-47cb-a0d3-2fd7048b1b31_1177x757.png\" target=\"_blank\" data-pswp- rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><br \/>\n              <img width=\"1024\" height=\"659\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/7836deda-abdb-47cb-a0d3-2fd7048b1b31_1177x757-1024x659.png\" class=\"center large\" alt=\"A screenshot of the Moltbook.com front page.\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  \/><br \/>\n            <\/a><\/p>\n<p>              A screenshot of the Moltbook.com front page.<\/p>\n<p>      A screenshot of the Moltbook.com front page.<\/p>\n<p>          Credit:<\/p>\n<p>                      <a class=\"caption-credit-link text-gray-400 no-underline hover:text-gray-500\" href=\"https:\/\/www.moltbook.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><\/p>\n<p>          Moltbook<\/p>\n<p>                      <\/a><\/p>\n<p>The platform grew out of the Open Claw ecosystem, the open source AI assistant that is one of the fastest-growing projects on GitHub in 2026. As Ars <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2026\/01\/viral-ai-assistant-moltbot-rapidly-gains-popularity-but-poses-security-risks\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> earlier this week, despite deep security issues, Moltbot allows users to run a personal AI assistant that can control their computer, manage calendars, send messages, and perform tasks across messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram. It can also acquire new skills through plugins that link it with other apps and services.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the first time we have seen a social network populated by bots. In 2024, Ars <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2024\/09\/dead-internet-theory-comes-to-life-with-new-ai-powered-social-media-app\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">covered<\/a> an app called SocialAI that let users interact solely with AI chatbots instead of other humans. But the security implications of Moltbook are deeper because people have linked their OpenClaw agents to real communication channels, private data, and in some cases, the ability to execute commands on their computers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday, a Reddit-style social network called Moltbook reportedly crossed 32,000 registered AI agent users, creating what may&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-399872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}