Welcome to Technofeudalism (You're the Serf)

Wake Up, Digital Serfs

Hey guys, so I’m about to explain why you’re not actually a “user” or a “customer” or even a “product.” You’re something much worse. You’re a serf. A digital peasant working someone else’s land for free while they get rich off your labor.

Welcome to technofeudalism, the economic system that replaced capitalism while you were busy arguing about whether React is better than Vue.

I know what you’re thinking. “But I choose to use these platforms! I’m not forced!” Yeah, and medieval peasants “chose” to work the lord’s land too. Because the alternative was starvation. Same energy, different century.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Big tech has replaced capitalism’s twin pillars of markets and profit with platforms and rents. With every click and scroll, we labor like serfs to increase their power. And most of you are too distracted by TikTok to notice you’re living in a digital feudal system.

The Lords of Cloud Capital

According to economist Yanis Varoufakis, capitalism is dead, replaced by technofeudalism where “cloudalists” extract value through their platform fiefdoms. Think about it. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple. These aren’t companies anymore. They’re digital kingdoms with their own laws, currencies, and subjects.

You think you’re participating in a “free market”? What market? When was the last time you had a real choice about which search engine to use? Which social media platform your friends are on? Which app store you can download from?

These companies don’t simply compete in markets. They own and control them, just like feudal lords controlled land in medieval times. The difference is that instead of controlling physical territory, they control digital territory. And guess what? You live there now.

Your Digital Feudal Lords:

• Google: Controls access to information (your digital library)
• Amazon: Controls access to commerce (your digital marketplace)
• Meta: Controls access to social connection (your digital town square)
• Apple: Controls access to mobile computing (your digital tools)

Each one operates like a medieval lord with absolute power over their domain. And you? You’re the peasant who works their land for free.

How You Became a Digital Serf (And Why You Love It)

Let me break down exactly how this happened, because most of you completely missed the transition.

Phase 1: The Enclosure of the Internet

The privatization of the internet destroyed the anarchic era of personal home pages and forums, replacing it with the sterile holdings of Facebook and other platforms. Remember when the internet was actually decentralized? When you could build your own website and people would find it?

Those days are over. Now everything goes through platform gatekeepers who decide what gets seen, what gets promoted, and what gets buried.

Phase 2: The Creation of Digital Fiefdoms

Apple created an army of unwaged laborers and vassal capitalists whose hard work yielded capabilities available exclusively to iPhone owners through the App Store. Think about this: millions of developers work for free to make Apple’s platform more valuable. Apple takes 30% of everything sold on “their” platform.

It’s brilliant, actually. Get your serfs to compete with each other to make your kingdom more valuable, then tax everything they produce. Medieval lords could only dream of this level of efficiency.

Phase 3: The Addiction Economy

Now they don’t just control the platforms. They control your attention, your behavior, your thoughts. Big digital companies use cyber-physical ecosystems that constantly extract and analyze large amounts of data, using tools and mechanisms for predicting and modifying human behavior.

You think you’re “choosing” to scroll through TikTok for three hours? You think you’re “deciding” to buy something you saw in an Instagram ad? Those aren’t your choices. Those are algorithmic manipulations designed to extract maximum value from your behavior.

The Economics of Your Digital Serfdom

Here’s what really pisses me off about this whole situation: you’re not just being exploited. You’re being exploited and told it’s “innovation.”

How Medieval Feudalism Worked:

• Lords owned the land
• Peasants worked the land for free
• Lords took most of the harvest
• Peasants got just enough to survive
• Lords claimed this was “protection”

How Digital Feudalism Works:

• Platforms own the digital space
• Users create content for free
• Platforms take most of the value
• Users get just enough engagement to stay addicted
• Platforms claim this is “connection”

Same system. Same exploitation. Better marketing.

The flow of data now contributes more to world GDP than the flow of physical goods. And who controls that data? You create it, but they own it. You generate it, but they monetize it. You’re the product, the worker, and the customer all at once. It’s the perfect scam.

Why You Can’t Just “Leave the Platform”

“But I can just delete Facebook!” Sure you can, peasant. And medieval serfs could “just leave the manor” too. How’d that work out for them?

Participation in digital platforms may seem voluntary, but engagement has become necessary for economic and social survival. Try running a business without Google. Try staying connected with friends without social media. Try finding work without LinkedIn.

The choice is theoretical. The dependence is real.

Your Digital Dependencies:

• Work: LinkedIn, email platforms, cloud services
• Business: Google Ads, Amazon marketplace, payment platforms
• Social: WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok
• Information: Google Search, YouTube, news platforms
• Commerce: Amazon, app stores, payment systems

You can “choose” to leave any individual platform. But you can’t choose to leave the system without becoming a digital hermit. And that’s not really a choice.

The Rent Extraction Machine

Here’s the part that should make you angry: in contrast to capitalism, techno-feudalism substitutes rents for profits and monopoly power for market competition.

Traditional capitalists had to create value to make profit. They had to build better products, improve efficiency, compete on price.

Digital feudal lords just extract rent from their platform ownership. They don’t have to make better products. They just have to maintain their monopoly position and tax everyone who wants to participate in the digital economy.

How Platform Lords Extract Rent:

• App Store Tax: 30% of every transaction
• Advertising Tax: Pay to reach your own audience
• Data Tax: Your information sold without your consent
• Attention Tax: Algorithmic manipulation of your behavior
• Network Tax: Can’t do business without using their platform

You work. They tax. You create. They own. You engage. They profit.

The Illusion of Innovation

The most insidious part of technofeudalism is how it’s packaged as “innovation” and “disruption.”

“We’re connecting the world!” No, you’re building a global surveillance and manipulation network.

“We’re democratizing information!” No, you’re creating algorithmic gatekeepers that decide what information people see.

“We’re empowering creators!” No, you’re turning creative work into unpaid labor for your platform’s benefit.

Every “revolutionary” tech company follows the same playbook:

1. Enter market with “free” platform
2. Eliminate competition through network effects
3. Lock users into ecosystem dependency
4. Extract maximum rent from captured audience
5. Claim you’re “making the world better”

It’s not innovation. It’s conquest disguised as convenience.

Why Programmers Are the Useful Idiots of Technofeudalism

You want to know who I really feel sorry for in this system? Programmers. You’re building the very chains that enslave you.

You think you’re “engineers” building cool technology. You’re actually digital blacksmiths forging better shackles for the peasants. And you’re doing it for stock options that make you feel like you’re part of the nobility.

Wake up call: Your stock options don’t make you a feudal lord. They make you a slightly better-compensated serf with an ownership stake in your own exploitation.

You work 60-hour weeks to optimize ad delivery algorithms. You build recommendation systems designed to manipulate human behavior. You create surveillance tools that track every digital footprint. And you tell yourself you’re “solving interesting technical problems.”

You’re not solving problems. You’re the problem. You’re the technical enablers of the largest exploitation system in human history.

The Antichrist of Competition

Remember when we used to have actual competition in tech? When there were multiple search engines, multiple social networks, multiple ways to do everything?

The digital domain has become a battleground for economic and social power where large technology corporations exert control over digital spaces, data, and the means of production. There’s no competition anymore. There are just different territories controlled by different lords.

The Great Platform Territories:

• Search Kingdom: Google (92% market share)
• Social Empire: Meta (3 billion users across platforms)
• Commerce Realm: Amazon (40% of US e-commerce)
• Mobile Dominion: Apple & Google (100% mobile OS market)
• Cloud Federation: Amazon, Microsoft, Google (70% of cloud market)

These aren’t companies competing in markets. These are digital nations with their own laws, economies, and populations. And you’re a citizen of all of them whether you like it or not.

The 2008 Money Printing Operation That Created Your Digital Lords

Here’s the part that really gets me. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float economies after the crash of 2008 went to big tech instead. With it they funded the construction of their private cloud fiefdoms and privatized the internet.

While regular people lost their homes and jobs, central banks printed trillions of dollars that ended up in tech company coffers. They used that free money to:

• Buy out potential competitors
• Build massive data infrastructure
• Create platform monopolies
• Hire away talent from traditional industries

You got austerity. They got infinite cheap money to build digital empires.

And now they have the nerve to lecture you about “economic efficiency” and “market forces” while operating monopolies funded by taxpayer money.

Why Government Won’t Save You

Nobody in government cares as they are all in the pockets of the big technofeudal lords. Think about it. How many former politicians work at tech companies? How many tech executives have government contracts? How much money do tech companies spend on lobbying?

The government isn’t going to regulate your digital lords. The government is their business partner.

Plus, most politicians are too old and clueless to understand how any of this technology works. They think Facebook is “social media” instead of recognizing it as a global surveillance and manipulation network. They think Google is a “search engine” instead of understanding it’s an information control system.

You’re on your own, serf.

The Matrix of Digital Dependency

The most beautiful part of technofeudalism is that most people don’t even realize they’re trapped. The system is so convenient, so “free,” so “innovative” that people defend their own exploitation.

“But Google gives me free search!” Yeah, and feudal lords gave peasants “protection” in exchange for their labor and loyalty.

“But I love using Instagram!” Yeah, and some slaves loved their masters too. Stockholm syndrome is a hell of a drug.

“But these platforms connect me with friends!” Yeah, and company towns connected workers with jobs and housing. Doesn’t mean the company wasn’t extracting maximum value from every aspect of your life.

You’ve been so conditioned to digital dependency that you can’t imagine life without your tech overlords. That’s not choice. That’s successful psychological manipulation.

The Path Forward (Spoiler: There Isn’t One)

Here’s the brutal truth: there’s no easy way out of technofeudalism. The system is too entrenched, too profitable, and too convenient for most people to reject.

Your options:

1. Accept your serfdom: Keep using the platforms, keep generating free labor, keep getting your attention harvested for profit
2. Digital minimalism: Reduce platform usage, pay for services instead of using “free” ones, accept social and economic marginalization
3. Fight the system: Support antitrust efforts, use alternative platforms, build decentralized alternatives, become a digital revolutionary

Most of you will choose option 1 because it’s easier. Some of you will try option 2 and give up when you realize how much of modern life requires platform participation. A few of you will attempt option 3 and discover that the digital lords have enough money and lawyers to crush any real threats to their power.

The Uncomfortable Reality

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the transformation of surveillance capitalism into a technofeudal system where big digital companies exercise political and economic domination over social spaces. What used to be optional became mandatory. What used to be convenient became necessary.

You’re not a customer of these platforms. You’re not even a user. You’re livestock in a digital farm, and your attention, data, and labor are the crops being harvested.

The sooner you accept this reality, the sooner you can make informed choices about how much of your life you want to surrender to your digital feudal lords.

The Bottom Line

Technofeudalism isn’t coming. It’s here. You’re living in it. When clicks become currency, we become digital serfs in a new age of technofeudalism.

You can keep pretending you’re a “digital native” or a “power user” or whatever makes you feel better about your voluntary servitude. Or you can recognize that you’re a serf in the most sophisticated exploitation system ever created.

The choice is yours. But understand what you’re choosing.

Your digital feudal lords are counting on you staying distracted, staying dependent, and staying convinced that your exploitation is actually your empowerment.

Don’t prove them right.

P.S. - I know this is going to trigger everyone who works at big tech companies. Good. Maybe you’ll finally realize you’re not building the future. You’re building the digital plantation. And most of you are too well-paid to care.