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Meta acquires Moltbook

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Re: Meta acquires Moltbook

#221

Post by KaiserPro »

biznickman wrote: post #112
ardeaver wrote: post #43

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.

This is an awful read on this acquisition. They didn't acquire Moltbook because of the software. Meta is far behind on the AI front especially as it applies to usage adoption. OpenClaw has begun showing new consumer use cases and Moltbook is directionally down a similar path. They get the team that built it and have more people on the AI initiative who are consumer-centric. I've watched Matt Schlicht from the team al…

Having been acquired by facebook, its a pretty accurate read.

If they land in the right org, they'll be allowed to maintain the open version (see https://www.mapillary.com/) However that's a rare outcome.

They'll be dumped in some org, and then bit by bit told that they can't do what they were doing before and now need to "forge alignment" or some other bullshit by posting on workplace.

They will need to deliver impact, But, as there are 3 other teams trying to do the same thing as you, you'll either be used as a battering ram by your org to smash the competition, or offered up as meat to save headcount.

Re: Meta acquires Moltbook

#223

Post by tavavex »

tired_and_awake wrote: post #51
ardeaver wrote: post #43

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.

I am right there with you. We might lack the language to describe this emotional state; its like the opposite of FAFO? There's also this nuance that they were acquired by meta so yeah they're rich but now they're working for not-serious people and will flame out in 18 months.

> There's also this nuance that they were acquired by meta so yeah they're rich but now they're working for not-serious people and will flame out in 18 months.

For the lack of a better word, this feels like cope. In the modern world, being rich easily covers any of those other 'downsides'. Rich people will have a far better life than I and probably many other people here ever will, despite what the situation is like in the rest of their lives.

Re: Meta acquires Moltbook

#224

Post by tavavex »

Terr_ wrote: post #124
dabedee wrote: post #80

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,…

I imagine it like a casino acquiring a former-joke product, which made hologram/animatronic illusions of people "winning big" at a table or slot-machine. Now whenever they detect a current customer might cut their losses and go home--OMG, look, that person over there just hit the jackpot! In other words, Facebook has a strong financial incentive to misrepresent (to ad-viewing customers, if not to investors) exactly h…

But they could implement it without buying Moltbook. Easily. They have the money and the engineers to make it happen a hundred times over. Something like it already might be on Facebook.

To me, this feels more like acquiring the name. Everyone's heard that 'trademark' so they want to have it so they could reuse it for whatever they make later.

Re: Meta acquires Moltbook

#225

Post by RulerOf »

MainlyMortal wrote: post #149
eddythompson80 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just technical content. Just the other day I was reading a post by an employed homes guy on r/seattle. The post was about his experience of being both newly employed but still homeless. The post was full of “this is not a scheduling conflict problem, this is a structural issue with the city”, “this is not me asking for a handout, this is struggling to survive within the system” While I get that he might have…

This is exactly the type of thing I'm talking about and why I'm convinced it's about the metrics/engagement boosting. I don't believe for a second that real people are using chatgpt/others for rewording real thoughts even from another language because those phrases are not natural even in translation. You'll also notice in the original post that that it always ends with a question that encourage replies. If the origi…

You're absolutely.... that's a tired joke at this point. Sorry.

Just brainstorming, but I suppose that account/karma farming is still useful for the people that do that sort of thing.

Engaging in a heavily on-topic way in larger niche subreddits is probably a really good way to get that done. There's always a motive and it's always money and it always idiotic.

I remember having a clear vision of how this tech was going to ruin communities on the internet. I really hate that it has mostly come to pass and there's no good way to fight it.

Re: Meta acquires Moltbook

#226

Post by joe_mamba »

lucrbvi wrote: post #196
gavinray wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely don't understand OpenClaw It's a worse version of Claude Code that you set up to work over common chat apps, from what I gather? Why would I not just use a Discord/WhatsApp bot etc plugged into Claude Code/Codex?

I share the feeling; but people using it are mostly non-technicals (despite the 50+ config files lol) and are just runing it constantly to do random things. But a message bot + Claude Code/Codex would be the better version

>but people using it are mostly non-technicals

Non-technical people haven't even heard of OpenClaw or Github, let alone know how to use and deploy them. Non-technical people don't even know what OS their Samsung or iPhone is called.

If you can find something on Github and deploy it on your system, you're part of the technical crowd.

Re: Meta acquires Moltbook

#227

Post by percentcer »

bentt wrote: post #208
biznickman wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an awful read on this acquisition. They didn't acquire Moltbook because of the software. Meta is far behind on the AI front especially as it applies to usage adoption. OpenClaw has begun showing new consumer use cases and Moltbook is directionally down a similar path. They get the team that built it and have more people on the AI initiative who are consumer-centric. I've watched Matt Schlicht from the team al…

If they ever do anything again it will be a miracle. Meta is where smart people go to trade in their ambition and morals for stock grants and golden handcuffs.

it's not a bad trade!

Re: Meta acquires Moltbook

#228

Post by jacobra2 »

gavinray wrote: post #187
biznickman wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an awful read on this acquisition. They didn't acquire Moltbook because of the software. Meta is far behind on the AI front especially as it applies to usage adoption. OpenClaw has begun showing new consumer use cases and Moltbook is directionally down a similar path. They get the team that built it and have more people on the AI initiative who are consumer-centric. I've watched Matt Schlicht from the team al…

I genuinely don't understand OpenClaw It's a worse version of Claude Code that you set up to work over common chat apps, from what I gather? Why would I not just use a Discord/WhatsApp bot etc plugged into Claude Code/Codex?

IMO OpenClaw's innovation is in

1) accessibility to non-technical folks. For the first time, they are having the Claude Code experience that we've had as software engineers for some time now

2) shared, community token context. Many end users are contributing to one agent's context together. This has emergent properties

Re: Meta acquires Moltbook

#229

Post by joe_mamba »

bentt wrote: post #208
biznickman wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an awful read on this acquisition. They didn't acquire Moltbook because of the software. Meta is far behind on the AI front especially as it applies to usage adoption. OpenClaw has begun showing new consumer use cases and Moltbook is directionally down a similar path. They get the team that built it and have more people on the AI initiative who are consumer-centric. I've watched Matt Schlicht from the team al…

If they ever do anything again it will be a miracle. Meta is where smart people go to trade in their ambition and morals for stock grants and golden handcuffs.

>Meta is where smart people go to trade in their ambition and morals for stock grants and golden handcuffs.

Only Meta? Why not most of SV that's driven by ad revenue and data collection? Which big-tech company that pays crazy money is actually making the world a better place?

Re: Meta acquires Moltbook

#230

Post by gavinray »

jacobra2 wrote: post #228
gavinray wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely don't understand OpenClaw It's a worse version of Claude Code that you set up to work over common chat apps, from what I gather? Why would I not just use a Discord/WhatsApp bot etc plugged into Claude Code/Codex?

IMO OpenClaw's innovation is in 1) accessibility to non-technical folks. For the first time, they are having the Claude Code experience that we've had as software engineers for some time now 2) shared, community token context. Many end users are contributing to one agent's context together. This has emergent properties

  > accessibility to non-technical folks.
When I read the setup docs, it required configuring a bunch of API keys in setting files though?
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