Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech Companies

Abstract

This article critically examines the domination exerted by big digital companies on the current social, economic, and political context of modern societies, with a particular focus on the implications for the proper functioning of democracy. The objective of this article is to introduce and develop the concept of datafeudalism, expose its emergence for the proper functioning of modern societies and democracy, and to propose courses of action to reverse this situation. To achieve this purpose, firstly, the evolution from surveillance capitalism to datafeudalism will be discussed. Secondly, the structures and operating logic of data feudalism will be analyzed. Thirdly, the harmful impacts of datafeudalism on the proper functioning of the democratic systems of the European Union will be examined. Finally, an attempt will be made to outline courses of action that will make it possible to reverse the situation of economic, social and political tyranny exercised by big digital companies through datafeudalism.

Full text

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Philosophy & Technology (2024) 37:90
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-024-00777-1
Abstract
This article critically examines the domination exerted by big digital companies
on the current social, economic, and political context of modern societies, with a
particular focus on the implications for the proper functioning of democracy. The
objective of this article is to introduce and develop the concept of datafeudalism,
expose its emergence for the proper functioning of modern societies and democ-
racy, and to propose courses of action to reverse this situation. To achieve this
purpose, rstly, the evolution from surveillance capitalism to datafeudalism will be
discussed. Secondly, the structures and operating logic of data feudalism will be
analyzed. Thirdly, the harmful impacts of datafeudalism on the proper functioning
of the democratic systems of the European Union will be examined. Finally, an
attempt will be made to outline courses of action that will make it possible to re-
verse the situation of economic, social and political tyranny exercised by big digital
companies through datafeudalism.
Keywords Datafeudalism · Technofeudalism · Surveillance capitalism · Digital
feuds · Digital platforms · Open data · Data activism · Democracy
1 Introduction
Over the past 25 years, there has been a substantial increase in the power of the
big United States (US) technology companies, commonly referred as GAMAMs
(Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft). This growth is evident in the rank-
ing of the top ve companies worldwide by market capitalization. In the 1999, 2004
and 2009 rankings, only Microsoft was listed. In 2014 Microsoft was joined by Apple
and Google, and nally in 2019, the ve big US technology companies were in the
Received: 28 March 2024 / Accepted: 29 June 2024 / Published online: 15 July 2024
© The Author(s) 2024
Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big
Tech Companies
CarlosSaura García1
Carlos Saura García
saurac@uji.es
1 Department of Philosophy and Sociology, Universitat Jaume I de Castelló, Castelló, Spain
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C. Saura García
top ve worldwide (Economic Research Council, 2019). It is worth noting that in
the ranking for this year, the big Chinese technology companies Alibaba and Tencent
have taken positions seven and eight.
In relation to this data, at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st cen-
tury, Lanier (2011, 2013) already anticipated that wealth was becoming increasingly
concentrated around a small group of big technology companies with the ability to
extract, control, store, and exploit large datasets. He also predicted that the burgeon-
ing information economy under construction could end up becoming a new form of
feudalism. This new reality has led to a monopolization of cyberspace and a progres-
sive increase in the dominance of big technological companies over modern societ-
ies, which has resulted in a new form of economic and political tyranny that degrades
and oppresses governments, markets, and society itself (Lanier, 2011, 2013; Srnicek,
2016; Webb, 2019; Zubo, 2019; Durand, 2020; Hawley, 2021; Varoufakis, 2023).
Zubo (2019) coined the term “surveillance capitalism” to describe the new logic
of domination by big tech companies1. Zubo (2019) denes this system as a new
form of tyranny exercised by big digital companies, based rstly on cyber-physical
ecosystems that constantly extract and analyze large amounts of data, secondly on
tools and mechanisms for predicting and modifying human behavior, and nally on
a system of massive social surveillance. Simultaneously, scholars such as Posner and
Weyl (2018), Mazzucato (2019), Durand (2020) and Varoufakis (2023) corroborate
the predictions of Lanier (2011, 2013) and argue that various political, economic and
social circumstances have caused or are causing surveillance capitalism to evolve
into technofeudalism2 or digitalfeudalism. These social systems are founded on the
domination of data through the creation of digital efdoms and digital serfs, and the
exploitation of the world’s vast datasets, i.e. datafeudalism.
The aim of this article is to develop the concept of datafeudalism, to explore its
negative impact on modern societies, particularly on democracy, and to propose pos-
sible courses of action. To achieve this goal, rstly, the dierences between surveil-
lance capitalism and datafeudalism will be detailed. Secondly, the characteristics and
implications of datafeudalism will be analyzed. Thirdly, it will examine the perni-
cious eects of datafeudalism on the proper functioning of democratic systems in
the European Union (EU). Finally, it will attempt to outline courses of action to
reverse the economic, social, and political tyranny exercised by big digital companies
through datafeudalism.
1 Big tech companies refer to both big US digital companies (Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Micro-
soft) and big Chinese digital companies (Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei and Tencent).
2 The rst reference to the term technofeudalism was introduced in a role-playing manual entitled Gurps
Cyberpunk. High-tech Low-Life Roleplaying (1990) written by the famous hacker Loyd Blankenship
(Blankenship, 1990, p. 104).
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Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech…
2 From Surveillance Capitalism to Datafeudalism
The discovery and creation of mechanisms to exploit behavioral surplus by Google
engineers and scientists and the subsequent promotion by the US government of a
global structure of mass social surveillance based on the collection, sharing, and
analysis of large datasets from big digital companies in the early months of the 21st
century were the embryo of surveillance capitalism (Zubo, 2019). On the one hand,
behavioral surplus refers to the large datasets of people’s information from cyber-
space that contain a large amount of behaviors, patterns, information and singulari-
ties of each individual citizen (Zubo, 2019). These datasets are extracted for free
by digital companies through the various actions, activities and processes that each
person or group of people performs through any digital device, platform or service
(Mayer-Schönberger & Cukier, 2013; Mayer-Schönberger & Ramge, 2018, 2022).
On the other hand, the George W. Bush administration, in the wake of the 9/11 terror-
ist attacks, initiated a comprehensive social surveillance program. This program was
predicated on the objective of fostering the growth of big U.S. technology corpora-
tions and leveraging their vast datasets to construct a governmental pervasive global
monitoring, surveillance, and control apparatus (Greenwald, 2014; Snowden, 2019)3.
The operational logic of the so-called surveillance capitalism is based on the free
and unilateral extraction and use of citizens’ data by big technological companies
as free raw material for its transformation into future behavioral predictions and for
improving mechanisms for predicting and modifying people’s behavior (Zubo,
2019). The datacation of citizens’ personal experiences gives big technological
companies a large knowledge capacity, which in many cases allows them to discover
patterns and peculiarities that people or groups of people do not know about them-
selves (Mayer-Schönberger & Cukier, 2013; Mayer-Schönberger & Ramge, 2022).
This situation allows big digital companies to create large asymmetries of knowl-
edge about citizens and to impose instrumental power based on radical indierence
and radical behaviorism, the creation, development and use of means to predict and
modify behavior, the abolition of the right to future time, and the degradation of
individuality and the hindering of the cognitive capacities of citizens (Zubo, 2015,
2019; Han, 2017b, 2022).
The convergence and hybridization of a series of economic, political, and social
factors during the rst two decades of the 21st century have been essential for the
growth, consolidation, and progressive empowerment of big technological compa-
nies. Among these situations, the promotion of the so-called Californian ideology
and the absolute freedom of big digital companies in cyberspace stand out (Bar-
brook & Cameron, 1996; Dyson et al., 1996), the empowerment of technological
solutionism and technological inevitability (Morozov, 2011, 2019), the historical
circumstances of heightened social insecurity related to terrorism, national security
and public health (Snowden, 2019; Zubo, 2019; Lyon, 2022; Varoufakis, 2023),
the implementation of expansionary monetary policies since the 2008 economic cri-
sis (Varoufakis, 2023) and the concentration and monopolization of cyber-physical
3 It is important to note that this massive governmental social surveillance infrastructure was discovered
and partially dismantled from 2013 onwards (Snowden, 2019).
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C. Saura García
spaces and digital ecosystems by big tech companies (Khan, 2017, 2019; Durand,
2020; Petit, 2020; Mayer-Schönberger & Ramge, 2022).
The outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic in 2020, combined with the aforemen-
tioned economic, political and social circumstances, was a turning point for the func-
tioning of surveillance capitalism and for the dominance of big digital companies
over modern societies (Varoufakis, 2023). On the one hand, the merging of real life
and virtual life and the total digitization of most people’s social and work activities
forced by health restrictions led to an increase in the use of digital platforms and
devices, resulting in an increase in big datasets and thus in the dominance of big
digital companies over citizens. On the other hand, most traditional markets were
forced to close and trade shifted mainly to algorithmic platforms and services, and
thirdly, there was also an increase in investment in these companies from expansion-
ary monetary policy money as the rest of the economic sectors were hit or crippled by
the pandemic, and thus their technological innovation. Varoufakis (2023) argues that
this set of situations provoked by Covid19 led to the transformation of surveillance
capitalism into a new technofeudal system in which big digital companies constitute
themselves as dominant social forces and exercise political and economic domination
over social spaces and the individuals who inhabit them through the monopolization,
dispossession, and depredation of large datasets.
This new system is called datafeudalism. Datafeudalism is based, on the one hand,
on the dependence of states, markets and civil society on algorithmic platforms and
services in which big digital companies exercise monopolistic control over data and
mastery over algorithms and, on the other hand, on the instrumentalization and refeu-
dalization of markets and civil society by big digital companies to achieve economic
and political goals (Zubo, 2019; Crouch, 2020; Durand, 2020; Bremmer, 2021;
Varoufakis, 2023; Staab, 2024)4.
The main dierences between datafeudalism and surveillance capitalism can be
analyzed in four principal aspects: three pertaining to socioeconomic factors and
one pertaining to political considerations. The rst socioeconomic aspect is the total
hybridization of the functioning of modern societies with the datacation, algorithmic
domination and automation of the mechanisms of prediction and behavioral modi-
cation exercised by big tech companies not only on the activities of users within
their platforms, but also on workers and markets, leading to the creation of feudal
relations of dispossession, predation, domination, servitude and vassalage between
big tech companies and the dierent actors in modern societies (Mayer-Schönberger
& Ramge, 2018, 2022; Durand, 2020; Teachout, 2020; Varoufakis, 2023)5.
4 It is important to highlight that there are two dierent models of operation within big digital companies
(Saura García, 2024). On the one hand, there is the instrumentalist model of the big US companies based
on the exploitation of citizens’ behavior in order to gain knowledge that allows them to control, com-
mercialize and monetize social learning and the mechanisms of prediction and behavioral modication
and thus increasing their economic income. On the other hand, the authoritarian model of China’s big
companies, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, seeks to limit, sacrice, shape and dominate the
behavioral freedom of the citizens in order to apply and disseminate China’s culture, ideology and values
in various forms and intensities and to protect China’s security and strategic objectives.
5 Firstly, there is a relationship of servitude of citizens to big digital companies, as they are the ones
who produce the large datasets in exchange for the algorithmic services oered by big tech companies
(Posner & Weyl, 2018; Durand, 2020). Secondly, there is a relationship of dispossession and predation
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Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech…
The second aspect relates to the creation and expansion of ubiquitous digital plat-
forms and services and their constitution as digital efdoms (Durand, 2020; Varou-
fakis, 2023). On the one hand, the expansion of big tech platforms and algorithmic
services to encompass practically all the activities of modern societies in terms of the
state, market, and civil society, with the capacity to penetrate the public, private and
intimate activities and behaviors of each individual. On the other hand, the constitu-
tion of large digital efdoms consisting of all the platforms and algorithmic services
of each of the big tech companies, based on the centralized exploitation of large
amounts of behavioral surplus data.
The third and last socioeconomic aspect has to do with the elimination of any
kind of competition and the domination of modern societies by big digital compa-
nies as a result of the acceleration and hybridization of cyberspace monopolization,
investment monopolization, intellectual monopolization, knowledge asymmetries
and economies of scale and scope in the dispossession, predation and exploitation of
large datasets (Srnicek, 2016; Zubo, 2019; Crouch, 2020; Durand, 2020; Schwartz,
2022; Wörsdörfer, 2022b; Varoufakis, 2023). The increase in anticompetitive busi-
ness practices carried out by big digital companies, including structural dominance,
leveraging, gatekeeping, self-preferencing, copycat expropriations, discriminatory
platform access, predatory pricing, and monopsony power, in conjunction with gov-
ernmental permissiveness, has been a signicant factor in the elimination of competi-
tion and the domination of markets by big digital companies (Wörsdörfer, 2022a, b).
In addition to the socioeconomic aspects, it is also necessary to consider the politi-
cal inuence that big technology companies have managed to exert in political and
legislative processes and decisions. Over the past decade, big technology companies
have dramatically increased their spending on lobbying in political and legislative
decision-making, have expanded the number of meetings between their top execu-
tives and presidents and senior state ocials, and have created revolving door sys-
tems between governments, government agencies and big digital companies (Zubo,
2019; Wörsdörfer, 2020). This situation has resulted in a phenomenon known as
“regulatory capture,” in which government regulatory agencies are dominated by
the very industries they are meant to regulate (Taplin, 2017; Meghani, 2021; Taylor,
2021). This occurs in order to protect the interests of the industries in question and to
ensure that their activities and expansion are not hindered.
The introduction of this datafeudal system in modern societies has succeeded in
institutionalizing big tech’s algorithmic political and economic domination of con-
sumers, workers, markets, governments, social spaces, and the individuals who
inhabit them through the feudalization of digital platforms and services, the instru-
mentalization of their users and the domination of the large datasets they produce.
over big data sets and domination over the activities of states, markets and civil society (Zubo, 2019;
Durand, 2020). Thirdly, there is a relationship of vassalage between the powers that be, governments,
political actors and big digital companies, as the former seek to acquire and use the knowledge and tools
of big digital companies for various economic and political purposes (Moore, 2018; Da Empoli, 2019;
Snowden, 2019).
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3 Datafeudalism: Digital Fiefdoms, Digital Serfs, and Identity
Ownership
The overlap and hybridization of real and virtual life, and the digitization of the vast
majority of citizens’ social and work activities have led to a total datacation of
modern societies that encompasses all areas of life (Mayer-Schönberger & Cukier,
2013; Van Dijck, 2014; Mayer-Schönberger & Ramge, 2022). In relation to this issue,
Calvo (2019) notes that this trend has been made possible by the potential of the
Internet of Things (IoT), the development of which has allowed the convergence
of the diverse and versatile application technologies that make it possible — Key
Enabling Technologies (KETs), Articial Intelligence (AI), and Big Data (BD) — as
well as its application in the dierent spheres of the human activity.
The aforementioned technologies have enabled the datacation of human activity
ranging from marketplace transactions, online commerce, and real-life commerce
(Mayer-Schönberger & Ramge, 2018), activities and behaviors during working hours
(Kim, 2018; Varoufakis, 2023), navigation and movements on platforms and in the
network (Bashyakaria et al., 2019; Aral, 2021), information related to smartwatches,
smartphones and smart vehicles (Thompson and Warzel, 2019), interactions with dig-
ital devices such as virtual assistants, smart TVs, refrigerators, microwaves, vacuum
cleaners, smart lights or toilets (Fowler, 2022) to the datacation of the iris of the
eye or people’s ideas, reactions, reections, ruminations and memories of people by
monitoring brain and body activity (Farahany, 2023).
The convergence of real and virtual life, social and labor digitalization, and mass
datacation has given rise to a digital panopticon (Han, 2017a), which is based on
the ideas of Bentham (1787) and Foucault (1975). This digital panopticon is man-
aged and dominated by big digital companies through digital efdoms. The digital
panopticon is a exible, intelligent, silent, and practically imperceptible mass social
surveillance structure that allows big digital companies to have an omnipresent and
prospective vision of modern societies and to record and observe all movements,
actions, and behaviors of every person, collective, or organization simultaneously,
thereby creating an illusion of total freedom (Han, 2017a).
The operational logic of datafeudalism is a predatory development of the logic of
surveillance capitalism. It is based on two fundamental elements: the creation of so-
called digital efdoms — the private cyber-physical ecosystems where datacation
takes place — and the encapsulation, oppression, and domination of the digital serfs
— the entity that produces the big datasets — within these digital efdoms.
Digital efdoms are conglomerates of digital platforms and services owned by big
digital companies, which modern societies depend on for their proper functioning
(Durand, 2020; Varoufakis, 2023). In these digital efdoms, digital serfs are encap-
sulated, and their movements and activities create large datasets that are preyed upon.
The analysis and exploitation of varied datasets are centralized, and the mechanisms
of prediction and behavioral modication are applied6. The aim of digital efdoms is
6 Two clear examples of digital efdoms can be seen in the Meta and Amazon conglomerates. On the one
hand, Meta includes various algorithmic platforms and services, such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp
and Threads. On the other hand, Amazon includes various algorithmic platforms and services such as
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Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech…
to maximize infrastructure utilization by users and make it dicult to exit from them
(Lanier, 2018; Williams, 2018; Aral, 2021). This situation leaves users with only two
options in the case that they want to leave a digital efdom: switch to another digital
efdoms, which comes with high exit costs, or ee from digital efdoms altogether,
resulting in total social, economic, and political marginalization (Plantin et al., 2016).
Durand (2020) describes the current situation of digital efdoms noting that in the
era of digitalization and hyperconnectivity the augmented human cannot escape the
dominion of algorithms. The crystallization of social surplus in the digital efdoms
permeates individual existences, binding them as once serfs were bound to the glebe
of lordly rule. This force of the social, which emanates from human communities
and shapes individuals, is objectied in big data and it is a new kind of means of
production, a terrain of experience to which the subjectivities of the 21st century are
attached (Durand, 2020).
The hybridization of human existence and cyber-physical ecosystems has led
to dependency of individuals and organizations on the algorithmic platforms and
services of big digital companies which exercise a domination over big datasets
and algorithmic platforms and services, transforming their users into digital serfs
(Durand, 2020; Varoufakis, 2023). Digital serfs are individuals who perform move-
ments and activities in digital efdoms and who produce sets of behavioral surpluses
consisting of large datasets. Once the data is produced, the serfs are dispossessed of it
and end up in the data centers of the big tech companies that owns the digital efdom.
It is important to emphasize, on the one hand, that there is no coercive force forcing
this collective to perform movements or activities in the digital efdoms, but that
they perform them — practically without being aware of it — in exchange for the use
of algorithmic platforms and services (Lanier, 2018; Williams, 2018). On the other
hand, serfs are no obligated to use the infrastructure of a single digital efdom, i.e.
they can use algorithmic platforms or services of dierent digital efdoms by adapt-
ing to their terms of use and having their data taken by the corporation that manages
each digital efdom.
The foundations that make up the datafeudal structure are threefold. First, the eco-
nomic and political domination of big tech companies based on the ability to control,
monitor, persuade and manipulate people’s behavior and the functioning of the mar-
ket, civil society and democracy through algorithmic platforms and services. Second,
big tech’s monopolization and domination of large datasets of digital efdoms. And
third and nally, the exploitation of the digital serfs by big tech through the dispos-
session and predation of the datasets created by their movements and activities within
the digital efdoms without recourse to coercion of any kind.
In datafeudalism as in the case of medieval feudalism, big digital companies (in
the case of feudalism, the feudal lords) own the digital efdoms that enable modern
societies to function (in the case of feudalism, the land) and prot from the move-
ments and activities of digital serfs on their algorithmic platforms and services
through behavioral surplus rents from large datasets for economic or political gain
(in the case of feudalism, the corvée or payments for the usufruct of land).
Amazon.com, Amazon Alexa, Amazon Music, Amazon Prime Video, Twitch, Ring LLC or Amazon Web
Services (AWS).
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The vast amount of data continuously produced by the serfs of the digital efdoms
and the centralization of the analysis and exploitation of this data gives big digital
companies detailed knowledge of each person’s identity.
[…] our digital identity belongs neither to us nor to the state. Strewn across
countless privately owned digital realms, it has many owners, none of whom is
us […] Facebook is intimately familiar with whom -and what- you like. Twit-
ter remembers every little thought that caught your attention, every opinion
that you agreed with, that made you furious, that you lingered over idly before
scrolling on. Apple and Google know better than you do what you watch, read,
buy, whom you meet, when and where. […] With every day that passes, some
cloud-based corporation, whose owners you will never care to know, owns
another aspect of your identity (Varoufakis, 2023, p. 73).
The advent of datafeudalism has given big digital companies a detailed knowledge of
many aspects of people’s privacy and intimacy that exceeds the knowledge that states
have of their own citizens and the knowledge that people have of themselves (Coeck-
elbergh, 2024). Such detailed knowledge of people’s privacy and intimacy has a direct
negative impact on the integrity, dignity, personality, anonymity, and identity of the
individuals themselves. This results in a control over the activities and actions they
perform and the data emanating from these behaviors, a monitoring of the freedom of
communication, a limitation of access and knowledge about oneself, and a reduction
of their freedom (Wörsdörfer, 2018). In relation to the obtaining and exploitation of
people’s privacy and intimacy by the datafeudal system, Balibar (2019) argues that
individuals are expropriated of their own existence in all phases of their life as a conse-
quence of a “total subsumption” of it that implies a total loss of individuality.
These facts have led to the application of a domination by big tech companies,
which can be understood as a form of oppression. This involves the imposition of
rules and power structures on the serfs of the glebe based on the exploitation of large
datasets of digital efdoms that causes a limitation, reduction, and manipulation of
these. The structure of domination of big digital companies is based on the vari-
ous dynamics that make domination possible, as outlined by Young (1990). These
dynamics are the creation of asymmetric power structures, the imposition of rules
and values, the limitation of freedom, and the application of dynamics of oppression
(Young, 1990).
The creation of asymmetric power structures has originated from two sources: the
emergence of large asymmetries of knowledge between big tech companies and the
citizenry, and the development of instruments and mechanisms of behavioral modi-
cation of people that have empowered big tech companies to intervene in the sov-
ereignty, autonomy, and self-determination of the digital serfs (Han, 2017b; Zubo,
2019; Varoufakis, 2023; Coeckelbergh, 2024). The imposition of certain norms and
values and the limitation of freedom within digital efdoms silences and manipulates
the opinions of the serfs of the glebe and prevents them from participating fully in
decision-making in social, economic, and political arenas. Finally, the application
of oppressive dynamics within digital efdoms, such as marginalization, exploita-
tion, powerlessness, and cultural imperialism, serves to exacerbate and amplify the
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Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech…
eects of big tech domination on the sovereignty, autonomy, and self-determination
of digital serfs.
The concept and scenario of datafeudalism draws a parallel with a scenario previ-
ously contemplated by John Stuart Mill in the 19th century. In his work, Mill posited
a scenario in which all lands within a country were owned by a single individual
(Mill, 2004). He observed that this arrangement would result in a profound depen-
dence of the country’s population on this person, enabling him to impose his condi-
tions without limitations. Such an arrangement could potentially impact the freedom
of individuals, organizations, and society, as well as the principle of happiness, the
principle of no-harm and the general welfare (Mill, 1977, 2004). The phenomenon
of datafeudalism has brought about a situation that closely resembles the dystopian
vision of a single individual owning the land, as envisioned by Mill. In this case, a
small group of big digital companies has amassed control over the algorithmic plat-
forms and services that underpin the functioning of modern societies and the extrac-
tion of the vast datasets that are generated in these environments. The dominance
of algorithmic platforms and services by digital efdoms, as previously discussed,
results in the elimination of market and citizen freedom and the monopolization of
big datasets and innovation. This leaves the general welfare of society in the hands of
the economic and political interests of large digital corporations.
This scenario bestows considerable power upon big technological companies to
dominate the citizenry and civil society. This poses a signicant threat to the citizens
freedom, the public interest and the proper functioning of democratic systems. In
light of the aforementioned circumstances, which have the potential to negatively
impact market competition, privacy and intimate aspects of citizens’ lives, as well
as the sovereignty, autonomy, and self-determination of society in general, and the
reversion of the general welfare, authors such as Newell (2014a, b) and van der Sloot
(2018), advocate the implementation of a set of measures based on the “non-domi-
nation principle”7 through balanced, proportional and eective government interven-
tions that prevent these harms, ensure the reduction of domination and interference
by big tech corporations, and enhance the capacity of citizens to govern themselves.
4 Negative Impacts on the Proper Functioning of Dmocracy
The characteristics and operating model of datafeudalism pose an unprecedented
threat to individual and collective freedoms, with direct impactions for public inter-
est8 and the proper functioning of democratic systems. On the one hand, the digital
platforms and algorithmic services of digital efdoms have become the epicenter of
7 The principle of non-domination does not focus on concrete violations of rights or freedoms, but on
power relations as such and the potential for abuse (van der Sloot, 2018). Non-domination is understood
as the state in which a person is not subject to the arbitrary will of another. This means that a person is
free not only when his or her actions are not interfered with, but also when he or she is not under the
discretionary power of another who can interfere at will (Pettit, 1997).
8 The public interest is dened as a moral notion that is primarily concerned with the proper conduct of
political life in democracies in general and with the proper ways of making collectively binding political
decisions in particular (O’Flynn, 2010).
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C. Saura García
a privatized digital public sphere that has emerged as the main support of the public
sphere (Hagen et al., 2017). The privatization of the public sphere has allowed big
digital companies to control, monitor and manage the information and communica-
tion ows of the public sphere, to extract the data generated by these activities and to
know in detail the public opinion and the ideology and sentiment of each individual
person at any given moment (Crouch, 2020; Innerarity & Colomina, 2020; García-
Marzá & Calvo, 2022; Staab & Thiel, 2022; Coeckelbergh, 2024). On the other hand,
the dominance of digital efdoms and large datasets allows big tech companies to
use and commercialize the tools and mechanisms of prediction and behavioral modi-
cation to carry out campaigns of inuence, persuasion or political manipulation of
citizens (Da Empoli, 2019; Zubo, 2019; Aral, 2021).
The privatization of the digital public sphere by big digital companies results in
a “refeudalization of the public sphere” (Habermas, 1962). The current situation of
algorithmic domination of information, communication, and data by a small group of
big digital companies, the great asymmetries of knowledge between these companies
and individuals, and the unequal access to discursive power within the digital public
sphere ts the hypothesis of the refeudalization of the public sphere put forward by
Jürgen Habermas in Strukturwandel der Öentlichkeit (1962).
The centralized exploitation of large, highly detailed and diverse datasets, knowl-
edge asymmetries, the monopolization of innovation and the dominance of digital
efdoms allow big digital corporations to carry out predictive and behavioral manip-
ulation actions based on microtargeting, neurotargeting, information distortion and
articialization of public opinion (Ash, 2016; Saura García, 2023; García-Marzá &
Calvo, 2024), in the creation of resonance chambers, bubble lters, spaces of social
conformity or hypersocialization (Pariser, 2011; Sunstein, 2017, 2019; Aral, 2021;
Woolley, 2023), and in the use of gamication, digital nudging and captology (Thaler
& Sunstein, 2009, 2021; Wörsdörfer, 2018). These activities have sociopolitical
implications that negatively impact the fundamental principles of democracy. They
limit and contaminate the provision of information, adulterate opinion formation, and
monitor and instrumentalize decision making (Zubo, 2019).
The advent of generative AI tools developed, in most cases, by major digital
corporations through new companies such as Open AI (in the case of Microsoft)
or Anthropic (in the case of Amazon) through chatbots and large language models
(LLMs) in modern societies has served to reinforce the characteristics and function-
ing of datafeudalism, to promote the dominance of these corporations over states,
markets and civil society and to increase the negative impacts of datafeudalism on
the functioning of democracy. These negative impacts are due to the increased preva-
lence of information distortion, the rise of articialization in the public sphere, the
emergence of deepfakes, and the use of personalization and manipulation techniques
that can disrupt democratic processes (Coeckelbergh, 2024).
These practices lead to a hollowing out of meaning and a perversion of the main
spaces and procedures of democracy, as a result of the management, restriction and
modulation of the democratic public sphere, public opinion and political action by
big digital companies — or by third parties such as governments, billionaires, powers
that be or foreign governments — according to their economic and political interests
(Crouch, 2020; Habermas, 2022).
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Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech…
Staab and Thiel (2022) delve into the current state of the democratic public sphere
and conclude that it is undergoing a refeudalization based on the maximization of
subjectivity and the singularization of people’s movements and activities (Reckwitz,
2020), in the dispossession, accumulation and exploitation of the data generated by
these actions by digital companies (Zubo, 2019; Staab, 2024), and in the applica-
tion — and commodication — of radical behaviorism based on large datasets to
generate specic behaviors (Pentland, 2015). Crouch (2020) denes the current state
of democracy as follows:
[…] the possessors of colossal wealth have been purchasing technology and
expertise that enable them to discover the salient characteristics of millions of
citizens and target them with vast numbers of persuasive messages, giving the
impression of huge movements of opinion, apparently coming from millions of
separate people, that in fact emanate from a single source. It is dicult to imag-
ine a more perfectly post-democratic form of politics, giving an impression of
debate and conict that is really stage-managed from a small number of concealed
sources. What seemed to be a liberating, democratizing technology has turned out
to favour a small number of extremely rich individuals and groups. (p.XII)
The great asymmetries of knowledge between big tech companies and citizens, and
the dominance of digital efdoms by these digital companies, have resulted in citi-
zens becoming mere “puppets, dancing to tunes set by the manipulators of public
opinion” (Crouch, 2020, p.X). In this situation, citizens are rarely able to autono-
mously and independently articulate their own opinions, demands or priorities, are
completely inuenced and manipulated by the economic and political interests of
big digital companies, and are instrumentalized to legitimize these interests (Zubo,
2019; Crouch, 2020; Coeckelbergh, 2024).
The characteristics and operating logic of datafeudalism, together with the refeu-
dalization of the public sphere, the use of mechanisms and instruments to predict and
modify citizens’ behavior, and the emergence and use of generative articial intel-
ligence represent a real emergency for popular sovereignty, public interest, and the
proper functioning of democratic systems. The perpetuation of the datafeudal system
in modern societies and the consequences of the dominance of big digital companies
over the main democratic spaces and processes may end up privatizing democracy.
5 Confronting Datafeudalism and its Impact on EU Democracies
Over the last few years, the EU has been developing regulations to try to control and
reduce the dominance of big tech companies in market, state, civil society, democ-
racy, and modern societies in general, and to protect and empower citizens9. The
EU legislative package aims to protect and promote values by promoting informed
9 Its legislative package consists of measures such as the Data Governance Act, the Data Act, the Articial
Intelligence Act (AIA), the Digital Market Act (DMA), the Digital Services Act (DSA) or the AI Liability
Directive, as well as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
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C. Saura García
consent and the creating privacy and data protection standards — through the GDPR
—, to establish responsibilities for big digital companies in relation to the spread
of disinformation, illegal activities and the defense of fundamental rights on digital
platforms — through the DSA —, to defend competitiveness and interoperability in
cyberspace — through the DMA —, to promote the creation of common European
data spaces — through the Data Act and the Data Governance Act —, to create a safe,
reliable and ethical legal framework to ensure that AI-based technologies are human-
centered and respect fundamental rights — through the AIA — and ultimately to
develop a European digital sovereignty (Bradford, 2020, 2023; Roberts et al., 2021).
This set of measures is a good starting point for trying to reduce the dominance
of big tech companies in modern societies, but constant updating of these measures
and the implementation of more precise and stringent measures are needed to reverse
datafeudalism and its negative impacts on modern societies. In this regard, Wörs-
dörfer (2022a, 2024) outlines a series of actions to be taken, including strengthen-
ing government regulatory agencies and eliminating the revolving doors between
these agencies and big digital corporations; deepening the oversight and regulation
of gatekeepers; moving toward true data portability and interoperability; improving
antitrust regulation and enforcement; and improving and updating the AIA to address
its lack of democratic accountability, oversight, and transparency and to regulate the
potential negative impacts of general-purpose articial intelligence on democratic
processes (Kak et al., 2023).
In addition to the aforementioned measures, it is imperative to implement more
precise and strict measures from various perspectives, levels and groups in order to
eectively address the adverse eects of datafeudalism on the public interest and
the proper functioning of democratic systems. These measures should be applied in
parallel with the aforementioned actions, targeting the exploitative, predatory, and
monopolistic practices of big digital companies in the data domain10.
With respect to macro-level (i.e., by government or supranational government)
actions, Mayer-Schönberger and Ramge (2022) argue that in modern societies based
on the exploitation of large datasets there is no point in data limitation, fragmentation,
compartmentalization, and minimization. They propose to apply a mandatory open-
ing of corporate datasets to other organizations, companies, or individuals in order to
reverse the dominance of big tech companies by de-monopolizing and socializing the
large datasets they extract, store, master and exploit.
In Mayer-Schönbgerger and Ramge’s proposal all companies and organizations
would have to provide access to their datasets in a collectivized and anonymized
manner. The more data collected by a corporation, the higher the level of openness11.
Mayer-Schönberger and Ramge (2022) state that: “With an attitude of facilitating data
10 In recent years, various proposals have been put forward to address the dominance of big tech compa-
nies. On the one hand, Rubinstein (2013) and Fischli (2022) proposed that data creators themselves man-
age their own data and share it as and with whom they wish, a model known as data-owning democracy
(DOD). On the other hand, Stallman (2018) proposed restricting the collection of private data and limiting
data extraction to what is strictly necessary for the operation of digital platforms and services.
11 There are other proposals for openness and de-monopolization of data similar to the one by Mayer-
Schönberger and Ramge (2022), such us Muldoon (2022). This proposal also seeks to reverse and redis-
tribute the power of big digital companies through the implementation of collective social ownership
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Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech…
use in business, politics, and society, digitalization will nally be able to full one of
its grand promises. The information engines of the few will become instruments of
empowerment for all” (p.104). The obligation to open and share large datasets would
deal a severe blow to the dominance of big tech companies and the operating logic
of datafeudalism. This would lead, on the one hand, to a reduction in the great asym-
metries of knowledge, innovation monopolies, and the eectiveness and eciency of
mechanisms and instruments of behavior modication. On the other hand, it would
lead to the reversal of the market, the state and civil society feudalization, and an
empowerment of these spheres in the face of big digital companies.
It is also important to note that the proper and ecient implementation of Mayer-
Schönberger and Ramge (2022) proposal to open and share large datasets of big
digital corporations would require the creation and strengthening of EU government
agencies (Meghani, 2021) to manage and control the opening of data and to monitor
and ensure that big digital companies share all data correctly. The implementation of
the openness of large datasets managed by the corporations themselves, as proposed
by Mayer-Schönberger and Ramge (2022), without a set of government agencies to
verify the processes of opening and sharing datasets and to enforce coercive mea-
sures in case of non-compliance, might not decisively aect the dominance situation
of big digital corporations. The implementation of these open data policies could
also be complemented by policies for the creation and promotion of open-structured
European big digital companies in the medium/long term by EU institutions, in order
to reduce dependence on large US and Chinese digital companies and to increase
European digital sovereignty.
In addition to macro-level actions, meso-level (i.e., by organizations, corporations
and civil society) and micro-level (i.e., by individuals) actions could also be taken,
although it is important to note that these actions may not be as eective as gov-
ernment action or may not even have a signicant impact on big tech companies’
domination.
As for meso-level measures by big digital corporations themselves are concerned,
the past decade has shown that attempts at self-regulation and the creation and
enforcement of ethical guidelines in some of the big digital companies have not had
a signicant impact on reducing the negative eects of the datafeudalim operating
model on democratic systems and do not seem to be the most eective option for
reducing the dominance of large digital corporations over modern societies (Cho-
manski, 2021; Taylor, 2021).
Meso-level actions carried out by civil society and micro-level actions can also
have an impact on datafeudalism and the power of big digital companies. Among
these actions, cloud mobilizations, data activism, datawhistleblowing or ethical
hackerism stand out (Gutiérrez, 2018; Milan, 2018; Lovink, 2022; Varoufakis, 2023;
Calvo & Saura García, in press). These types of actions use the infrastructures of
digital efdoms with the aim of exposing, denouncing and boycotting the functioning
of datafeudalism, reversing the domination that big digital companies exercise over
data in modern societies through data, and making citizens aware of, on the one hand,
of big data sets, the participation of individuals and communities, and the democratic control of digital
infrastructure and big data sets (Muldoon, 2022).
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C. Saura García
the dispossession and depredation of their data and, on the other hand, the commodi-
cation of the tools and mechanisms of prediction and behavioral modication and
the instrumentalization of people and markets.
The combination of the eects of the regulations being developed by the EU,
the implementation of more precise and stricter measures to reverse datafeudalism,
the socialization of large datasets proposed by Mayer-Schönbgerger and Ramge, and
the various actions that can be taken by civil society actors and individual persons
could have a major impact on the functioning of datafeudalism and break its model
of domination over modern societies. In the democratic sphere, these eects could
reverse the privatization and refeudalization of the public sphere, of public opinion,
and of the main democratic spaces and procedures, leading to a sharp decrease in
the ability to inuence and manipulate citizens and an increase in their sovereignty,
autonomy, and self-determination.
6 Conclusion
The development of surveillance capitalism towards a datafeudalism based on the
refeudalization of modern societies and the domination of states, markets, politics
and, civil society by big digital companies to achieve economic and political goals,
the creation and domination of digital efdoms and digital serfs, the dispossession,
predation, monopolization and exploitation of large datasets, and the commodi-
cation of prediction and behavioral modication of people have led to exponential
growth and have given unprecedented power to big digital companies. This situation
represents a major emergency for the proper functioning of spaces, democratic pro-
cesses, and democracy in general.
Inaction or increased concentration of power by these big digital companies could
exacerbate this situation, potentially leading to a state of tyranny and absolute social
dominance that may be dicult to reverse. The implementation of more stringent
regulations in the current EU package of measures aimed at reducing the domi-
nance of big tech companies, along with the introduction of ambitious regulations
to de-monopolize and socialize the vast datasets of these digital giants by states, and
various civil society protest actions within digital realms, could have a signicant
impact on the logic of datafeudalism and potentially overturn the dominance of big
tech companies over modern societies. The implementation of these measures could
reduce power asymmetries between large corporations and states, markets, and civil
society within modern societies, leading to greater sovereignty, autonomy, and self-
determination of their citizens.
Acknowledgements This article was made possible thanks to the funding received from the Universitat
Jaume I through a predoctoral contract (PREDOC/2022/08) and through a grant (E-2023-16) for a research
stay in the Chair on Articial Intelligence and Democracy of the Florence School of Transnational Gov-
ernance at the European University Institute (Italy). This study is framed within the objectives of the
Research and Technological Development Project “Cordial Bioethics and Algorithmic Democracy for a
Hyper-Digitalized Society” [PID2022-139000OB-C22], funded by MCIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/
FEDER,EU.
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Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech…
Author Contributions Not applicable.
Funding Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature.
There was no funding to disclose for this project.
Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature.
Data Availability This research does not involve the analysis or generation of any data.
Declarations
Ethical Approval and Consent to Participate Not needed, no data was collected for this study.
Consent for Publication Not needed, no data was collected for this study.
Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this
article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line
to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use
is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission
directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/.
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