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Peer Production: Criticism
Although many scholars view peer production as an Internet-mediated social phenomenon that has created valuable collaborative communities, several opponents have emerged in recent years to challenge this view. Researchers like Daniel Kreiss, Megan Finn, and Fred Turner criticize the dominant utopian consensus for maintaining an overly esteeming view of peer production. In their 2010 article, they assert that this new mode of production exists as an alternative to the traditional form of bureaucracy. Referencing Max Weber’s analysis of modern bureaucracy, Kreiss et al urge those with a celebratory consensus of peer production to scrutinize its foundation in the same manner that Weber evaluates properties of bureaucracy. They argue that bureaucracy possesses more functional aspects to better handle social problems than peer production, which they consider unsustainable. To offer an example, the three authors state that bureaucracy promotes a rationally organized, rule-oriented functioning of society. Kreiss, Finn, and Turner then proclaim that this aspect becomes undermined by peer production due to its tendency to encourage individual behavior based on private morality. This tendency, they reason, degenerates autonomy by “collapsing public and private boundaries” or in other words by allowing people’s professional lives extend into their private domains.

Other critics of peer production dispute that its openness to participation can potentially generate misinformation or products of amateur quality. In Andrew Keen’s book The Cult of the Amateur, he assesses generated content from peer production on the Internet and expresses his belief that it exists as a “smokescreen”, emptily promising to provide more truth and depth of knowledge. He declares that this information revolution is actually leading to the disappearance of truth. According to Keen, the Internet advocates peer production to a questionable degree by permitting anyone to post information freely. This form of peer production, he cautions, leaves room for people to plagiarize ideas and distort original thoughts, which he says ultimately creates an uncertainty in the validity of information. Another author, Jaron Lanier, uses Wikipedia as an example to similarly illustrate how dependence on mass collaboration in some cases may result in unreliable or biased content. He warns that websites like Wikipedia promote the notion of the “collective” as all knowing, and that this concentrated influence stands in direct contrast to representative democracy. Lanier then reminds us that this idea has led to detrimental consequences in the past.

In addition to these opposing views, other criticisms stem from the postulation claiming peer production does not perform as well in some contexts as it does in others. Paul Duguid suggests in his article that peer production works less efficiently outside the bounds of software development. He states that if society continues to rely on peer production in various domains of information production, then a search for ways to guarantee quality will become necessary. Yochai Benkler similarly proposes that peer production may produce functional works like encyclopedias more proficiently than creative works. Despite the valuable potential of peer production, several critics continue to doubt extensive collaboration and its ability to yield high quality outputs.