See also
Look up technofeudalism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Technofeudalism is a modern economic system where big technology companies have power similar to feudal lords in the past. Instead of land, these companies control digital platforms, data, and online markets. People and smaller businesses rely on these platforms, just like peasants once relied on feudal lords for land and protection.
As a subject technofeudalism sits at the intersection of two subject areas, Information technology and Economics, and the concept has cropped up independently within both disciplines.
In Information Technology area Bruce Schneier wrote an article in November 2012 entitled "When It Comes to Security, We're Back to Feudalism", which was published in Wired Magazine, another in December 2012 entitled "Feudal Security", and another "You Have No Control Over Security on the Feudal Internet" for Harvard Business Review in June 2013. Since then the term has entered the vocabulary of sites such as Slashdot.
Within Economics the concept of technofeudalism was described in an article by Marina Gorbis of the Institute for the Future in 2010 and has been developed by several thinkers who argue that digital capitalism is shifting toward a new kind of economic control. While the term "technofeudalism" was later popularised by Durand (2020) and Varoufakis (2023), its conceptual roots can be traced to Kostakis and Bauwens, whose Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy (2014) described "netarchical capitalism" as a "new-feudal form of cognitive capitalism" in which centralised platforms enable user cooperation but appropriate all monetised exchange value, leaving the actual creators of value unrewarded. One of the most well-known voices on this topic is Yanis Varoufakis, an economist and former Greek finance minister. He argues that companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple do not simply compete in markets—they own and control them, just like feudal lords controlled land in the Middle Ages.
French philosopher Cédric Durand also explores this idea in his book Technoféodalisme: Critique de l’économie numérique (2020), where he describes how digital platforms extract wealth from users, workers, and businesses without true competition. He claims that today’s economy is no longer based on traditional capitalism, where businesses compete, but on a system where a few tech giants rule over digital space.
These thinkers believe that rather than creating a free and open Internet, digital platforms have built a system where power is concentrated in the hands of a few, making it harder for smaller players to succeed.
Technofeudalism is so called because users of the term perceive similarities between present-day technological systems and medieval feudal systems:
Today, instead of land, technology companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and others hold control over vast digital infrastructures, data, and online platforms, positioning themselves as the new 'lords' of the digital realm. ...Under techno-feudalism, cloud capital functions much the same way as digital 'land' in creating virtual domains or 'digital fiefdoms,' such as Amazon.com. In those fiefdoms, platform owners not only extract value from the consumers but also the producers by imposing fees, which are similar to the ground rent of feudal times.