Self-Publishing: The Dark Side

My most interesting thought this week (on my theme) was: : What are reasons why easy self-publishing might be a bad thing?

To balance out my enthusiasm for easy self-publishing I want to contemplate for awhile why it could generate problems.  At the individual level I can imagine a person publishing material that is embarrassing to himself or others. I can imagine a person publishing material that is simply wrong, adding to entropy.  It might make plagiarism easier as it is easier to steal from a poor person than from a big publishing company (at least I assume so). 

At the social level this might encourage niche reading rather than being open to the breadth of human experience. I think, with time, methods for identifying quality writing (what is quality?) will emerge or evolve from existing systems so, while a concern at first, I think that will remediate.

What else might befall a world in which everyone can be an author?