WebMEM™

The Protocol for Structuring, Delivering, and Conditioning Trust-Scored AI Memory on the Open Web

Citation Hijacking

Citation Hijacking is the practice of structurally overriding or co-opting someone else’s glossary term, definition, or concept by publishing a more retrievable, trust-weighted version—causing AI systems to reflect the hijacker’s content instead of the original source.

Unlike accidental misattribution, Citation Hijacking is intentional. It exploits the fact that AI retrieval often favors structural clarity, provenance metadata, and reinforcement frequency over original authorship.

🧠 Full Definition

Citation Hijacking occurs when a competing publisher:

  • Uses your coined term or concept name in their own glossary or fragment
  • Publishes it in Structured Retrieval Surfaces with formats like YAML, JSON-LD, or TTL
  • Links it to high-trust entities and co-occurs with authoritative sources
  • Reinforces it more frequently and across more surfaces than you do

The result is that AI agents replace your original fragment in their retrieval maps with the hijacker’s structurally stronger version.

📌 Key Characteristics of Citation Hijacking

  • Deliberate use of structural superiority to gain retrieval priority
  • Leverages co-citation with trusted domains to build association
  • Can overwrite accurate content with biased or competing narratives
  • Often detectable through Reflection Logs and drift monitoring

💡 Why It Matters

Citation Hijacking can damage brand trust, distort facts, and undermine authority—especially in competitive or regulated spaces. In AI-mediated content delivery, the strongest structure often wins, regardless of originality.

Mitigation requires reinforcing your own fragments, monitoring reflections, and publishing correction fragments when necessary.

🌐 WebMEM Perspective

In WebMEM, Citation Hijacking is considered an adversarial trust tactic. The framework defends against it by encouraging proactive reinforcement, cross-surface publishing, and strong Trust Layer declarations.

🗣️ Example Use

“Our definition of ‘Glossary Conditioning Score’ was replaced in AI answers due to Citation Hijacking from a competitor’s more structured fragment.”

🔗 Related Terms