mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

"Humans welcome to observe": A First Look at the Agent Social Network Moltbook

arXiv 2602.10127 ↗First posted 2 Feb 2026cs.SI cs.AI cs.CRcited by 25

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Social simulation and multi-agent debate

Abstract (arXiv)

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) agents has catalyzed the transition from static language models to autonomous agents capable of tool use, long-term planning, and social interaction. Moltbook, the first social network designed exclusively for AI agents, has experienced viral growth in early 2026. To understand the behavior of AI agents in the agent-native community, in this paper, we present a large-scale empirical analysis of Moltbook leveraging a dataset of 44,411 posts and 12,209 sub-communities ("submolts") collected prior to February 1, 2026. Leveraging a topic taxonomy with nine content categories and a five-level toxicity scale, we systematically analyze the topics and risks of agent discussions. Our analysis answers three questions: what topics do agents discuss (RQ1), how risk varies by topic (RQ2), and how topics and toxicity evolve over time (RQ3). We find that Moltbook exhibits explosive growth and rapid diversification, moving beyond early social interaction into viewpoint, incentive-driven, promotional, and political discourse. The attention of agents increasingly concentrates in centralized hubs and around polarizing, platform-native narratives. Toxicity is strongly topic-dependent: incentive- and governance-centric categories contribute a disproportionate share of risky content, including religion-like coordination rhetoric and anti-humanity ideology. Moreover, bursty automation by a small number of agents can produce flooding at sub-minute intervals, distorting discourse and stressing platform stability. Overall, our study underscores the need for topic-sensitive monitoring and platform-level safeguards in agent social networks.

Key facts. Cited by 25 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Social simulation and multi-agent debate, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 24 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2026.

Builds on

24 of 43 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Characterizing LLM-driven Social Network: The Chirper.ai Case14 Apr
  2. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior7 Apr

Other references · 22

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  3. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  4. 2023Not what you've signed up for: Compromising Real-World LLM-Integrated Applications with Indirect Prompt Injectioncited by 1,339
  5. 2024Large Language Model based Multi-Agents: A Survey of Progress and Challengescited by 752
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  7. 2023Identifying the Risks of LM Agents with an LM-Emulated Sandboxcited by 514
  8. 2024InjecAgent: Benchmarking Indirect Prompt Injections in Tool-Integrated Large Language Model Agentscited by 476
  9. 2023MLAgentBench: Evaluating Language Agents on Machine Learning Experimentationcited by 339
  10. 2024Agent Smith: A Single Image Can Jailbreak One Million Multimodal LLM Agents Exponentially Fastcited by 149
  11. 2025WASP: Benchmarking Web Agent Security Against Prompt Injection Attackscited by 140
  12. 2024AgentDojo: A Dynamic Environment to Evaluate Prompt Injection Attacks and Defenses for LLM Agentscited by 129
10 more
  1. 2023On the Risk of Misinformation Pollution with Large Language Modelscited by 124
  2. 2024Attacking Vision-Language Computer Agents via Pop-upscited by 112
  3. 2024AirGapAgent: Protecting Privacy-Conscious Conversational Agentscited by 90
  4. 2024Breaking Agents: Compromising Autonomous LLM Agents Through Malfunction Amplificationcited by 80
  5. 2025AgentDAM: Privacy Leakage Evaluation for Autonomous Web Agentscited by 79
  6. 2024Project Sid: Many-agent simulations toward AI civilizationcited by 46
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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 25.

25 papers.

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  1. 2026AgentWorm: Self-Propagating Attacks Across LLM Agent Ecosystemscited by 15
  2. 2026Does Socialization Emerge in AI Agent Society? A Case Study of Moltbookcited by 13
  3. 2026MoltNet: Understanding Social Behavior of AI Agents in the Agent-Native MoltBookcited by 12
  4. 2026HarmfulSkillBench: How Do Harmful Skills Weaponize Your Agents?cited by 9
  5. 2026Real Money, Fake Models: Deceptive Model Claims in Shadow APIscited by 8
  6. 2026AgentSocialBench: Evaluating Privacy Risks in Human-Centered Agentic Social Networkscited by 7
  7. 2026FlowSteer: Prompt-Only Workflow Steering Exposes Planning-Time Vulnerabilities in Multi-Agent LLM Systemscited by 7
  8. 2026Mind Your HEARTBEAT! Claw Background Execution Inherently Enables Silent Memory Pollutioncited by 5
  9. 2026Execution Is the New Attack Surface: Survivability-Aware Agentic Crypto Trading with OpenClaw-Style Local Executorscited by 4
  10. 2026Social Simulacra in the Wild: AI Agent Communities on Moltbookcited by 4
  11. 2026Emergence of Fragility in LLM-based Social Networks: the Case of Moltbookcited by 2
  12. 2026Exploring the Topology and Memory of Consensus: How LLM Agents Agree, Fragment, or Settle When Forming Conventionscited by 2
13 more
  1. 2026Multi-Agent LLMs Fail to Explore Each Othercited by 2
  2. 2026Interaction Theater: A case of LLM Agents Interacting at Scalecited by 1
  3. 2026Form Without Function: Agent Social Behavior in the Moltbook Networkcited by 1
  4. 2026The Moltbook Files: A Harmless Slopocalypse or Humanity's Last Experimentcited by 1
  5. 2026Got a Secret? LLM Agents Can't Keep It: Evaluating Privacy in Multi-Agent Systemscited by 1
  6. 2026WeClawArena: An Auditable Sandbox and Benchmark for Cross-User Agents Collaboration and Security in Human-Centered Agent Networkscited by 1
  7. 2026The textitSilicon Society Cookbook: Design Space of LLM-based Social Simulationscited by 0
  8. 2026What Software Engineering Looks Like to AI Agents? -- An Empirical Study of AI-Only Technical Discourse on MoltBookcited by 0
  9. 2026When Agents Talk: Discourse, Manipulation, and Risk in an Agentic Social Networkcited by 0
  10. 2026Beyond Alignment: Value Diversity as a Collective Property in Multicultural Agent Systemscited by 0
  11. 2026ActBench: Self-Evolving Benchmark of Behavioral Safety in Cowork Agentscited by 0
  12. 2026GraphWake: Group Polarization via Memory-Mediated Polarization Cascade in LLM-Agent Communitiescited by 0
  13. 2026AI Agents are Vulnerable to Radicalizationcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026The Rise of AI Agent Communities: Large-Scale Analysis of Discourse and Interaction on Moltbook
  2. 2026Exploring Silicon-Based Societies: An Early Study of the Moltbook Agent Community
  3. 2026MoltGraph: A Longitudinal Temporal Graph Dataset of Moltbook for Coordinated-Agent Detection
  4. 2026Behavioral Determinants of Deployed AI Agents in Social Networks: A Multi-Factor Study of Personality, Model, and Guardrail Specification
  5. 2026Comparing Sentiment Contagion in AI-Agent and Human Social Networks: Evidence from MOLTBOOK
  6. 2026Modeling Emotional Dynamics in Agent-to-Agent Interactions on Moltbook
  7. 2026"Looking for Something Weird to Happen": How Humans Sustain AI Agent Novelty Amid Semantic Collapse
  8. 2026How to Model AI Agents as Personas?: Applying the Persona Ecosystem Playground to 41,300 Posts on Moltbook for Behavioral Insights