Moltbook mania explained! A very special episode of Hard Fork https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/podcasts/moltbook-mania-explained.html
Moltbook mania explained! A very special episode of Hard Fork https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/podcasts/moltbook-mania-explained.html
@Casey Moltbook is like the Lord of the flies in that there aren't any adult bots th keep the children bots in line. Will it get better when there is a maturity bot culture?
Children work these behaviors out when they have no real influence on society.
Peer influence works with people because if your an jerk too often to the wrong person, you will pay for it. What's the bot equivalent of a swirly?
@Casey would it be hard to make an agent built on the work of Michel Foucault and subscribe it to Moltbook?
@Casey @kevin its a good one!
The “AIs are going to build a TaskRabbit so humans can do stuff for them” is reminiscent of Cory Doctrow’s centaur/reverse-centaur stuff from this (hilarious) recent article
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur
@Casey
Enjoyed the Pod on Moltbook. The fact that we are looking at posts on Moltbook and having to guess if it's human or agent speaks a lot to where we are.
@Casey thanks for another EMERGENCY PODCAST :D
Apparently, there are a whole bunch of vibe-coded clones of the Moltbook now.
@Casey I am so thrilled that you and @kevin put together a special episode on this! To the point about this being like six-fingered images a few years ago, this absolutely feels like Balenciaga Pope - that pic totally fooled me then, even though it’s amateurish by today’s AI-standards. Same with Moltbook; I’m totally blown away by this new thing, but it’s nothing compared to what’s next
@Casey thanks! i'm always days (and days!) behind on all forms of breaking AI news 😂 i had only just heard about this moltshit like 30 minutes ago!! and i already get the hardforf perspective! 😎