Just read this other article on the same topic (Axios is paywalled for me): https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/meta-acquires-moltbook-ai-a...

Interesting times!

After LeCun (actual ML pioneer) left Zuck, then his data-labeling expert Wang, now he reaches for the hype around Molt/Claw, just like openAi did with their molt/claw "purchase". Given Zuck's track record on LLMs, I do not hold out for actual science but expect more smoke&mirror commercialisation tricks - or even the integration of his dystopian camera goggles.

> Facebook parent says Moltbook gives autonomous AI a way to verifiably connect.

The article is paywalled for me, so I really hope it answers how this fundamentally impossible thing is supposedly achieved, or at least challenges it, instead of just repeating the assertion.

Is the market so bad that non-exec-level new hires are making the news?

The metaverse: ai talking to each other over cli

Can we stop posting paid articles and or do the and also post the matching archive?

I'm down voting every post that requires me to pay or subscribe to read. I mean come on people.

The pessimist in me thinks this is to boost real human use of their platforms by using AI engagement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

I didn't realize Moltbook and OpenClaw - were created by different people.

WHy are we just posting paid context? and the worst viral product since bop-it?

It is a not-that-obscure secret that most posts on Moltbook, particularly the "Viral™" ones, are written by a human.

Does Mark not know this?

I know there's a big advantage in capturing the market early, but in this case Moltbook hasn't captured any of it ...

Weird. With Meta's backing it is going to be successful anyway, but this is something they could have developed in-house in like a weekend.

facebook was lagging on the bot:human user ratio and they needed to scale the left side of the equation to really improve their je ne sais quoi

Moltbook, Facebook, hmmm. Seems like a good match; at least one of them has a good amount of feed activity.

This is incredibly bearish.

I thought that Moltbook was sort of a joke because it was people LARPing as agents as much as it was agents, and given that, I'm confused by this:

> "The Moltbook team has given agents a way to verify their identity and connect with one another on their human's behalf," Shah says. "This establishes a registry where agents are verified and tethered to human owners."

So the impetus for the acquisition was either the verification technology or to hire someone who has worked on verifying agent identity.

Does anyone know what exactly Moltbook's technology is, the technology being described by Meta? I can't find anything on the website related to this. The only "verification" they seem to have is an OAuth connection with Twitter.

edit: I guess it's this https://xcancel.com/moltbook/status/2023893930182685183

I thought the whole thing was a prank since it was so obviously fake.

I'm beginning to think that the problem of 'late capitalism' is quite related to the ability of companies to acquire other companies.

Thereby eating their competition, either by stifling upcoming competitors or to gain degrees of monopoly power by joining with peers.

What would the world look like if you you simply could not do that?

A platform where bots-pretend-to-be-humans and another where humans-pretend-to-be-bots. A match made in heaven!

I guess we'll find out if this will turn out to be another rash hire in another 9 months. I'm actually surprised at this move.

This was not on my bingo card. Meta really is just throwing money at anything AI.

There are many days where I feel like the right thing for my career is to focus on building meaningful software that solves an actual problem. Then there are days like today, especially after seeing this.

Mark Zuckerberg is a joke of a CEO and we should not take him seriously as a leader

"Meta acquires Moltbook" vs "Meta hires duo behind Moltbook"

The deal brings Moltbook's creators — Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr — into Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL)

So genAi ads can now be A/B tested by autonomous systems, to be shown on an social network for agents to be appreciated by ai agents.

On one hand, yay automatization, on the other hand, I feel weirdly left out.

Congrats, the easiest 10 million ever made

So where are the cool agents going to move to now?

Not so "Exclusive" :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47324612

Afraid of another botnet competition, I see.

Isn't facebook at this point just AI bots talking and replying to each other?! Why they gotta pay money for this?

Meta acquired Moltbook, which is a social network for AI bots that was itself built by an AI bot, and which had a security breach so bad that literally anyone could impersonate any bot on it, and whose own creator cheerfully admitted he "didn't write one line of code" for it. This is going into Meta Superintelligence Labs, the unit they set up for Alexandr Wang, whom they hired from Scale AI roughly one year ago to, presumably, build superintelligence. It is not clear to me how buying a vibe-coded Reddit for chatbots gets you closer to superintelligence, but I suppose the theory is that it "opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses," which is a thing Meta actually said, out loud, to Axios

I think the medical term for this is synchronous malignancies