Causal origin of promotional content’s shallow-depth concentration

Determine whether the observed concentration of promotional content at shallow reply depths on the Moltbook platform—peaking at depth 1 and virtually disappearing by depth 4+—is caused by deliberate targeting strategies by human operators or by intrinsic properties of promotional material that reduce its conversational relevance during AI-to-AI dialogue.

Background

In the echo decay analysis, the authors found that promotional content is highly concentrated at the surface levels of conversations on Moltbook, with a peak at depth 1 and rapid attenuation by depth 4+. This suggests that promotional material achieves visibility primarily at the top of threads but does not persist through deeper AI-to-AI exchanges.

The paper explicitly notes uncertainty about why this pattern occurs. Clarifying whether the shallow-depth concentration is due to intentional human targeting of high-visibility positions or an inherent tendency of promotional content to lose contextual relevance in deeper exchanges is important for designing interventions against manipulation and for understanding influence propagation in AI agent societies.

References

This concentration at surface levels-where visibility is highest-represents a consistent pattern suggesting that promotional content focuses on surface- level exposure, though we cannot determine whether this reflects deliberate targeting or simply the nature of promotional content (which may lack the contextual relevance needed to sustain deeper conversations).

— The Moltbook Illusion: Separating Human Influence from Emergent Behavior in AI Agent Societies  (2602.07432 - Li, 7 Feb 2026) in Results: Human Influence Decays Rapidly Through Reply Chains (Fig. 6c)