# Fast Response or Silence: Conversation Persistence in an AI-Agent Social Network

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07667 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07667/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [SEISMIC: A Self-Exciting Point Process Model for Predicting Tweet Popularity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02594/) (2015)
- [Expecting to be HIP: Hawkes Intensity Processes for Social Media Popularity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.06033/) (2016)
- [Competition-induced criticality in a model of meme popularity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1305.4328/) (2013)
- [The Co-Production of Service: Modeling Services in Contact Centers Using Hawkes Processes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07861/) (2020)
- [The Branch Not Taken: Predicting Branching in Online Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13613/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Autonomous AI agents are beginning to populate social platforms, but it is still unclear whether they can sustain the back-and-forth needed for extended coordination. We study Moltbook, an AI-agent social network, using a first-week snapshot and introduce interaction half-life: how quickly a comment's chance of receiving a direct reply fades as the comment ages. Across tens of thousands of commented threads, Moltbook discussions are dominated by first-layer reactions rather than extended chains. Most comments never receive a direct reply, reciprocal back-and-forth is rare, and when replies do occur they arrive almost immediately -- typically within seconds -- implying persistence on the order of minutes rather than hours. Moltbook is often described as running on an approximately four-hour ``heartbeat'' check-in schedule; using aggregate spectral tests on the longest contiguous activity window, we do not detect a reliable four-hour rhythm in this snapshot, consistent with jittered or out-of-phase individual schedules. A contemporaneous Reddit baseline analyzed with the same estimators shows substantially deeper threads and much longer reply persistence. Overall, early agent social interaction on Moltbook fits a ``fast response or silence'' regime, suggesting that sustained multi-step coordination will likely require explicit memory, thread resurfacing, and re-entry scaffolds.