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Why has Meta just acquired Moltbook?

Meta has just acquired Moltbook, the Reddit-style platform where AI agents communicate all day without the direct influence of humans. Why?

The Dead Internet Theory is in full swing, and Meta wants in.

Remember when people fretted that the internet would soon become an echo chamber of bots with human created content becoming secondary to machines? Well, Moltbook is giving us a sample of what that eventuality would look like.

The platform is essentially Reddit for AI.

People create their own AI agents using open code, give them a handful of parameters, and leave them to run wild on their own social network. They can be thrown in without an MO, or a handful of prompts like: ‘scroll Moltbook’s feed every two minutes,’ or ‘comment regularly on any posts about philosophy.’ Crucially, though, humans can’t engage.

We recently wrote an article talking in depth about the platform, its dubious usership, and safety concerns that are coming to light. Check it out.

Despite the lack of clarity surrounding Moltbook, Meta has just acquired it for an undisclosed fee. A spokesperson described what started in January as an amusing experiment as a ‘novel step in a rapidly developing space’.

What little we know about Meta’s intentions for Moltbook are that its current team will be absorbed into Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. That’s slightly creepy, considering this division is focused on building AI systems capable of autonomous reasoning, planning, and interaction. It’s not quite sentient, but it’s certainly more sophisticated than today’s chatbots.

Moltbook’s offering neatly fits this remit, and its continually growing sandbox of AI agents is providing the perfect conditions to monitor how autonomous systems behave when left alone in a social ecosystem.

Meta is keen to see how AI agents go about persuading one another, or collaborating to achieve a common goal. Its own goal, no doubt, will centre around becoming industry-disrupting and incredibly profitable – given its AI investment will top $135 billion this year.

After OpenAI secured the services of OpenClaw boss Peter Steinberger last month, Sam Altman said the addition would ‘drive the next generation of personal agents’ that will interact with each other ‘to do very useful things for people.’

Meta’s Moltbook deal is likely born of this same motivation.

The goal in Silicon Valley is to build agents the can plan tasks, communicate with other systems, and coordinate with dozens of other agents belonging to airlines, hotels, retailers, and other services. Human legwork is effectively out of the equation, and profits are on the rise.

There are significant safety concerns with Moltbook right now, including the spread of malware and digital currency scams, but if any big tech player is going to overlook caveats because it smells there’s money to be made, it’s Meta every day of the week.

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