Techno-feudalism: your communities do not belong to you

“Capitalism is dead, killed by capital itself. Techno-feudalism, where digital giants dominate the global economy, has taken over.”

This quote comes from Yanis Varoufakis, economist and former Greek Minister of Finance. Once you accept the analogy, it becomes very difficult to look at your media plan the same way.

The analogy, and why it holds up

In feudal times, power was defined by control over land. Lords collected rents. Peasants worked lands that did not belong to them.

Today, platforms are the land. The lords are called Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Zhang Yiming, and Tim Cook. And the peasants are all the creators of content, apps, games, and every brand publishing online.

A telling detail: just like back then, the lords are all men.

You might be reading this article after seeing a post on LinkedIn. Microsoft land, run by Lord Ryan Roslansky. We are all his peasants. Back to work, folks.

The hard truth: “our communities never belong to us”

Here is the dynamic, without euphemisms.

Your communities follow you. They watch your content. They comment, and you reply to them.

Except it is not your community. And since it does not belong to you, nothing it produces belongs to you either: not the value generated, not the audience, not the data. You have the right to post, and to hope you reach “your” community.

Because even the reach of your posts is out of your hands. Algorithms decide who gets served your latest video, and it will only be a tiny fraction of your followers.

Rest assured, though: if you really want to reach a significant share of “your” community, you can always sponsor your posts. Platforms are more than happy to sell you ad space.

This is the textbook definition of a rent. You financed the audience building. Then, you pay to access it.

It’s not an accident, it’s the product

You might think this is a side effect. It isn’t, and platforms no longer hide it.

In an interview with Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, explicitly distinguishes between two categories:

• The creator: an individual who produces original content, without any necessary commercial intent, and who seeks to grow on the platform, helping it grow along the way.
• The publisher: a brand, not an individual. Which also produces original content (Mosseri readily admits there is “great content from publishers on Instagram”) but “definitely has commercial intent”.

And commercial intent is frowned upon.

The rationale is crystal clear: “We focus on creators because we believe power will continue to shift from institutions to individuals, across all sectors.”

In other words: brands and publishers can keep investing massive sums in content creation, community management, sponsored posts, and advertising. Platforms are not here to help them. They are here to slip three ads between two stories, powered by this premium content.

This echoes the warning news publishers have sounded for years: social platforms enslave and impoverish the very people who feed them.

The risk is not theoretical, it is operational

Three very concrete consequences.

1. Instability. Algorithms change constantly, sometimes brutally overnight. Accounts with over a million followers can be banned without warning. If your growth depends on a channel whose rules can change without notice or recourse, you don’t have a channel: you have an exposure.

2. Loss of CRM. By delegating the relationship to platforms, brands lost direct access to their customers. This exact observation led us to build Frak. Platforms capture 100 % of the value and data [1].

3. Brand erasure. This is the most insidious. What matters to a platform is consuming as much content as possible, regardless of who produced it. Hence the phrases we all say: “I saw that on Instagram,” “I saw that video on TikTok,” “I just saw that post on LinkedIn.”

Never the creator’s name. Never the brand’s name. The name of the land.

Breaking free from feudalism

Let’s be clear: no one is leaving the platforms. They hold everyone’s attention, and that is where your audience is.

The point is not to leave. It is to stop renting your entire growth from them.

The question to ask is simple: what would happen if your main account disappeared tomorrow morning? If the answer is “we lose our acquisition channel,” you are a peasant. If the answer is “we lose visibility, but keep our customer relationship,” you are an owner.

Moving from one to the other requires three things:

1. A direct connection with your customers, without an algorithmic middleman
2. Ownership of your data, first-party and in real time
3. Growth powered by your community, just like platforms rely on it to grow

What if you had the power to leverage your communities for growth, just as they grow the platforms?

Your customers are not a rented audience. They are real people talking to other real people on channels no algorithm controls: a conversation, a WhatsApp message, a lunch.

That is the only ground that still belongs to you.

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I am Virginie Maire, co-founder of Frak Labs, which turns your customers into a scalable, profitable, and authentic acquisition channel. A committed entrepreneur and mother of two, I have spent 20 years navigating media, social networks, influencer marketing, and e-commerce… and I’m still having as much fun as ever!