'Towards re-decentralising the Web: an ethical web and data infrastructure' with Prof Ruben Verborgh, Sir Tim Berners-Lee & Sir Nigel Shadbolt

10 October 2025

Portrait of Professor Nigel Shadbolt

with Professor Nigel Shadbolt
Principal of Jesus College, Oxford

Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt is a leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and was one of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of Web Science. He is Principal of Jesus College Oxford and a Professor of Computing Science at the Uni...

Portrait of Sir Tim Berners-Lee

with Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Professorial Research Fellow

Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while at CERN in 1989. He is the Co -Founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, Co-Founder and President of the Open Data Institute and Founder of the World Wide Consortium (W3C). Sir Tim is a Professor ...

Portrait of Professor Ruben Verborgh

with Professor Ruben Verborgh
Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow

Ruben Verborgh is a Professor of Decentralized Web Technology at IDLab of Ghent University – imec and a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School for the Programme on Ethical Web and Data Architectures within the University of Oxford.Ruben is a Sol...

This talk was recorded on 26th February at the Oxford Martin School.

The Web was once for everyone. Thirty years ago, the Web was launched as an open, common, universal infrastructure that anyone with a computer and a modem could use to communicate, publish and access information. In recent years, however, it has radically diverged from the values upon which it was founded.

The medium that was designed to bring together the world’s information and support a plurality of voices—the many, without privileging the few—is increasingly dominated by a number of platform companies, who have established business models and built services that generate huge profits. There are increasing concerns of the concentration of powers that enable the dominance and controls of a few.

In this talk, Prof Ruben Verborgh, Visiting Fellow of the Oxford Martin Programme on Ethical Web and Data Architectures, will be joined by Prof Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Prof Sir Nigel Shadbolt, to discuss how new forms of technical and legal infrastructure are being developed and deployed to provide a more equitable and ethical treatment of individual users in the age of AI. They will outline the challenges of achieving better data autonomy, providing individuals with better rights to data privacy while enabling them to benefit from the exciting possibilities of digital innovations.