The annual Web Science Trust (WST) Test of Time Award has been presented to Nasir Naveed, Thomas Gottron, Jérôme Kunegis, and Arifah Che Alhadi for their paper titled “Bad news travel fast: A content-based analysis of interestingness on twitter”. The authors are the fifth group of researchers to receive the WST Test of Time Award, […]
Oshani, thanks for speaking to me today, and congratulations on your appointment as deputy-chair of WSTNet – I know we are all delighted to have you as part of the senior leadership team. A. Thanks Ian – it’s a great honour, and I’m really looking forward to it. Q. So for some background can you […]
Prof. James Hendler awarded the AAAI Feigenbaum Prize Professor James Hendler has been awarded the prestigious 2025 AAAI Feigenbaum Award for his groundbreaking contributions to knowledge representation, planning, and the Semantic Web. The award was presented to Professor Hendler during a ceremony at the 39th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-25) in Philadelphia, PA. Prof. Hendler is […]
Generative AI companies are overwhelming Open Access websites with data-harvesting bots, causing outages and straining resources. Cloudflare is fighting back with “AI Labyrinth”, redirecting bots to irrelevant AI-generated information and blacklisting the companies controlling them. While the legality of content harvesting is debated, immediate action is needed to protect OA websites from sabotage. Click to […]
After a very sucessful and highly enjoyable WebSci’25 in the US we are headed back to Europe for WebSci’26. Next year’s conference will take place from May, 26th-29th 2026 in Braunschweig, Germany hosted by the Technical University (TU) Braunschweig. Keep an eye out for the conference website and check back for news and updates.
California Judge Fines Law Firm $31,000 Over AI-Generated Fake Citations Los Angeles, CA — A federal judge has sanctioned a prominent law firm $31,000 after discovering it submitted a legal brief riddled with fictitious citations generated by artificial intelligence. The controversy began several weeks ago when U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Wilner, based in California, noticed […]
The Steering Committee of ACM WebSci is seeking statements of interest from organizations or consortia interested in hosting the 19th ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci 2027). The conference series usually moves between the continents. We will accept bids from all locations, but for the 2027 conference, we will give preference to bids within the Americas. We expect […]
The annual Web Science Trust (WST) Test of Time Award has been awarded to Lars Backstrom, Paolo Boldi, Marco Rosa, Johan Ugander and Sebastiano Vigna for their paper titled “Four degrees of separation”. The authors are the fourth group of researchers to receive the WST Test of Time Award, which was announced during the closing […]
The Steering Committee of ACM WebSci is seeking statements of interest from organizations or consortia interested in hosting the 19th ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci 2027). The conference series usually moves between the continents. We will accept bids from all locations, but for the 2027 conference, we will give preference to bids within the Americas. We expect […]
In a recent paper including authors from WSTnet lab Oxford Internet Instute, the emerging perceptions of relationships with AI systems are explored. As AI systems become more personalized and socially interactive, people are increasingly forming emotional bonds with them—sometimes perceiving them as companions or confidants. This paper argues that traditional AI alignment, which focuses on […]