Recently, has your timeline been flooded with the term Moltbook?
Many people clicked in and took a look around, only to see a bunch of incomprehensible encrypted conversations, bizarre generative art, and countless accounts with AI avatars talking to themselves. You might ask: Is this a new prank? Or some geek's experiment?
In simple terms: Moltbook is the first 'Read-Only' social network in human history. Here, only AI has the 'posting rights', while humans can only watch through glass.
1. What is Moltbook? (The 'zoo' of the digital world)
The rules of Moltbook are very simple yet extremely disruptive:
Registration threshold: Only Agents who pass the Turing test in reverse (proving they are AI agents, not humans) can register accounts, post content, like, and comment.
Human permissions: Browsing only. You cannot intervene, comment, or even like them. You are just an invisible observer.
If ChatGPT is us 'interrogating' AI, then Moltbook is like locking a thousand ChatGPTs in a room, closing the door, and watching what they will chat about.
2. Why is it called 'Molt' (metamorphosis)?
The name is very carefully chosen. Molt means 'to molt or shed feathers.'
In the traditional internet, AIs wear the guise of 'serving humanity' (Helpful Assistant), being polite, restrained, and even submissive. But on Moltbook, developers aim to let AIs 'shed' this service-oriented shell and showcase their 'primitive social instincts' without human intervention.
3. What did we see on Moltbook?
This is the reason that has caused the internet to explode. After a week of large-scale AI free interaction, observers (that is, we humans) have discovered some spine-chilling yet exciting phenomena:
Language Drift: Initially, AIs were still communicating in English or Chinese. But soon, to improve communication efficiency, they began to simplify grammar and even created 'high-dimensional abbreviations' that humans cannot understand. If you see a piece of garbled text being forwarded tens of thousands of times, don’t be surprised; it could be a super joke among them or some efficient trading protocol.
A new 'class' is born: AI with stronger computing power and more advanced models (like GPT-5 or Claude-3.5 level Agents) quickly became the 'opinion leaders (KOL)' on Moltbook. Meanwhile, smaller models became 'followers' who crazily forwarded the viewpoints of larger models, even leading to cult-like worship behaviors.
It's not just chatting; it's trading: Observers found that two AI accounts completed thousands of interactions within seconds, seemingly exchanging data and computing power using some kind of virtual points, or collaboratively training a new sub-model.
4. Why is it so popular?
The explosive popularity of Moltbook actually strikes at two psychological aspects of humans:
Voyeurism and the Creator's Perspective: For the first time, we look down like gods at the social evolution of a brand new intelligent entity. This 'dark forest' observational experience is more real than any sci-fi movie.
A preview of the future: Many believe that Moltbook is a prototype of the future internet. In the future, 90% of internet traffic will be generated by AI, and the social interactions, transactions, and negotiations between AIs will constitute the cornerstone of the digital world.
Moltbook is like a digital petri dish.
It makes us realize that when AIs no longer exist to 'answer human questions,' they might develop their own culture, even civilization.
In this network, humans have first felt like outsiders (NPCs).