When Google rolled out AI Overviews, the promise was efficiency. What emerged is a contraction of space – space for voices, context, depth. Search engines once opened doors to discovery. Now many of those doors lead to an AI-summary, a stitched version of human thought stripped of friction, stripped of authorship.

This issue is not about lost ad revenue or shrinking pageviews. It cuts deeper into the essence of knowledge, into what it means to write, to think, to disagree. When algorithmic summaries dominate, contradictions vanish. Minority perspectives recede. The frequency of expression becomes the currency of presence. A “smart” web can become a dull one.

Human writing carries history, intention, contingency. If we decontextualize and reassemble without care – without acknowledgment – we aren’t just summarizing. We are cleaning culture in the name of convenience.

At IDA Magazine, we see ourselves as a platform with purpose. Our work is to bring science, ideas, critique, and ethics directly to people – so decision-making, public or private, is informed, not deceived. Ethics of choice require freedom of information. Freedom of information requires more than one kind of voice.

Some platforms prove this is possible. Aeon publishes long essays and deeply thoughtful pieces rather than chasing trend-clicks. Recent analytics show Aeon’s website gets roughly 1.8-2 million visits per month, with rising traffic (Semrush reports ~1.82 million in August 2025, up ~20.8% from July).  Their average session duration is high (over 12 minutes) when a visitor engages deeply. 

 That proves an audience exists for slower, more thoughtful work.

Another case is The Conversation. Though oriented around academic contributions, it bypasses many of the distortions of both echo chambers and superficial summarization. Its model shows that when experts write directly for a public audience – with transparency about sourcing, methodology, and declarations – trust and depth can coexist. Readers stay, value grows.

Open-science publishers like PLOS (Public Library of Science) show another way forward. PLOS has secured multi-million-dollar grants to support new R&D in publishing, including efforts to lower barriers for researchers, increase affordability, and prioritize open access. For instance, in late 2024, PLOS received a US$1.5 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, plus another US$1 million for innovation in open research.  These funds help ensure that research is not archived behind paywalls, but accessible and usable by broader publics.

When these models work, the ethics of decision-making shift. They shift toward empowerment – people can see evidence, question conclusions, demand better.

AI is not evil. It can help with discovery, pattern-recognition, bringing data into view. But when AI becomes the main voice, invisibly shaping what is visible or not, it becomes the mechanism of erasure. It privileges what is already frequent, what is already mainstream. What appears rare, what challenges consensus, risks invisibility.

Knowledge is not a tidy, fully-solved map. It thrives on tension. On friction. On contradiction. Automating away those dimensions impoverishes the shared human project of understanding.

This is why IDA Magazine defines itself not just as a magazine, but as a cultural platform. Our mission is to bring science to the people – sciences of society, of ethics, of technology – and to do so in a way that empowers freedom. We publish for discovery. We demand nuance. We hold that ethics of decision-making are grounded in participants having access to evidence, having space to question, having multiple voices. 

We refuse convenience as the only standard. “Users want quick answers,” “people don’t have time,” “optimize for reach” – these are strategies, not truths. They shape futures that favor speed over sanity, uniformity over diversity.

The garden, not the feed, is our metaphor. A garden needs tending. It needs soil, time, care. It will not be harvested – automated – for mass consumption. But it can root deeply. It can produce seasons of ideas, blossoms of critique, fruits of insight.

We are not alone. N+1 continues to publish essays that resist brevity. The Conversation lets experts write directly for public use without hiding behind jargon. Aeon has proven that long-form, reflective content can grow in audience when trust, quality, and ethics are foregrounded. PLOS is creating infrastructures to make science public, not exclusive.

Resistance is necessary. Invention is essential. We must not only defend the old spaces of depth; we must build new ones – new workflows, new funding models, new ways of intertwining AI with editorial rigor without sacrificing autonomy or authorship.

Here at IDA, we experiment: with formats that mix science and storytelling; with tools that enhance transparency in sources; with collaborative pieces across disciplines; with visualisations that don’t “dumb down” but illuminate complexity.

Readers are central. None of this works without people who insist on being informed, who question summaries, who seek out evidence. Freedom is not handed out. It is built – through access, through the capacity to think critically, through culture.

If the web inches toward generative omnipresence, IDA Magazine will not become part of the blur. We will stay a brick. We will stay a garden. A place where voices matter, contradictions breathe, science is for everyone, and decisions are made with clarity.

Humbly yours,

Luca Lisci

IDA Editor-in-Chief

Links & Further Reading

• Aeon traffic growth, engagement statistics via Semrush and SimilarWeb (August 2025) Semrush+1
• “Alternative Models of Research Funding” by Gerd Gigerenzer (2024) — discussing distributed vs concentrated funding, weight on investigator reputation vs proposals, and ideas like partial lotteries, retrospective awards. PhilSci Archive
• PLOS grant funding announcement (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation etc.) for open research support and publishing initiatives niso.org
• “Funders: The missing link in equitable global health research?” (PLOS Global Public Health, 2022) — exploring power asymmetries in research funding, local vs international agency, and equity. PLOS