In the last part of 2011, conversations swirled around the Internet and print about the assault on museum authority. The Marcus Institute for Digital Education in the Arts (MIDEA) summarized some of the discussion in their blog entry "The Participatory Museum and a New Authority." Other sites joined in the discussion, for example, the Museum Geek asked if an institution can be an authority at all in a blog post titled "Why should I believe anything you tell me, you nameless and faceless institution?!?" and the American Association of Museum's Center for the Future of Museums blog identified the challenge to museum authority as an issue in forecasting the future of museum ethics. The author argued that museum education is not responsible for the current undermining of museum authority; rather it is the Internet and social media. Social media has allowed others to join in the creation and distribution of knowledge, enabling a many-to-many transaction. Authority is about expert knowledge but in the past it has also been about control. Museums only had authority in so far as museum professionals controlled access to their collections. The author is not in favor of denying the authority of museum professionals, but the author is in favor of letting go of some of the control and sharing authority in the many-to-many transactions that social media makes possible. (Contains 10 notes.)