In 2005, Keen wrote that Web 2.0 is a "grand utopian movement" similar to "communist society" as described by Karl Marx.
He states: 
It worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer.
It suggests that everyone--even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us--can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves.
Web 2.0 "empowers" our creativity, it "democratizes" media, it "levels the playing field" between experts and amateurs.
The enemy of Web 2.0 is "elitist" traditional media.

— Andrew Keen, The Weekly Standard
On 5 June 2007, Keen released his first book The Cult of the Amateur, published by Doubleday Currency, and gave a talk at Google the same day.
The book is critical of free, user-generated content websites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Digg, Reddit and many others.
He prominently featured in the 2008 Dutch documentary The Truth According to Wikipedia and was also featured in the 2010 American documentary Truth in Numbers?.

Keen stresses the importance of media literacy and claims that user generated blogs, wikis and other "democratized" media, cannot match the resources of mainstream media outlets.
Pointing to examples like being able to gather teams together, travel to dangerous locations (sometimes spending years in the region) and having skilled and experienced editors oversee the process, Keen forecasts that if the current Web 2.0 mentality—where content is either given away or stolen—continues, in 25 years there will not exist a professional music business, newspaper industry or publishing business and challenges his audience to question whether we value these or not.

Keen discusses often-overlooked problems with participatory technology.
He describes the Internet in amoral terms, saying it is a mirror of our culture. "
We see irreverence, and vitality, and excitement.
We see a youthfulness.
But we also see, I think, many of the worst developments in modern cultural life, and, in particular, I think we see what I call digital narcissism, this embrace of the self.
It's Time magazine's person of the year for last year was you."
Keen is also heavily critical of anonymity on the Internet, believing that it makes us behave worse, not better.
He says: "The Web's cherished anonymity can be a weapon as well as a shield."

Showing that misbehavior using anonymity has been so widely adopted, new definitions such as "trolls" and "sock puppets" have emerged.
In 2005, Keen wrote that Web 2.0 is a "grand utopian movement" similar to "communist society" as described by Karl Marx. He states: 
It worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer. It suggests that everyone--even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us--can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves. Web 2.0 "empowers" our creativity, it "democratizes" media, it "levels the playing field" between experts and amateurs. The enemy of Web 2.0 is "elitist" traditional media.
— Andrew Keen, The Weekly Standard
On 5 June 2007, Keen released his first book The Cult of the Amateur, published by Doubleday Currency, and gave a talk at Google the same day. The book is critical of free, user-generated content websites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Digg, Reddit and many others. He prominently featured in the 2008 Dutch documentary The Truth According to Wikipedia and was also featured in the 2010 American documentary Truth in Numbers?.
Keen stresses the importance of media literacy and claims that user generated blogs, wikis and other "democratized" media, cannot match the resources of mainstream media outlets. Pointing to examples like being able to gather teams together, travel to dangerous locations (sometimes spending years in the region) and having skilled and experienced editors oversee the process, Keen forecasts that if the current Web 2.0 mentality—where content is either given away or stolen—continues, in 25 years there will not exist a professional music business, newspaper industry or publishing business and challenges his audience to question whether we value these or not.
Keen discusses often-overlooked problems with participatory technology. He describes the Internet in amoral terms, saying it is a mirror of our culture. "We see irreverence, and vitality, and excitement. We see a youthfulness. But we also see, I think, many of the worst developments in modern cultural life, and, in particular, I think we see what I call digital narcissism, this embrace of the self. It's Time magazine's person of the year for last year was you." Keen is also heavily critical of anonymity on the Internet, believing that it makes us behave worse, not better. He says: "The Web's cherished anonymity can be a weapon as well as a shield."
Showing that misbehavior using anonymity has been so widely adopted, new definitions such as "trolls" and "sock puppets" have emerged.
Andrew Keen