When social media no longer needs people, what does the ‘social’ part mean?

By Vincent Charles, Professor of AI for Business and Management Science, Queen's University Belfast
Tatiana Gherman, Associate Professor of AI for Business and Strategy, University of Northampton

The social media we know was once easy to define. Platforms such as Facebook or X were designed to mediate human relationships at scale: sharing stories, forming communities, debating ideas, and increasingly, monetising attention.

However flawed these platforms became, they were built on one core assumption: people interacting with people. But that assumption is currently being tested.

In January 2026, a new platform called Moltbook was…

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