Beyond 1984

A few examples:

Meta – The Social Media Gatekeeper

Controls Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, making it the primary gatekeeper of social networking and communication for billions worldwide.

Prevents social profiles from interoperability with other platforms, locking users inside and blocking competition.

Kills innovation by forcing businesses, creators, and communities to operate inside its closed ecosystem, where they are at the mercy of algorithmic changes, monetization rules, and shadowbanning.

Destroys free markets by monopolizing digital advertising, making it impossible for independent platforms to compete fairly.

By keeping social identity locked inside its walled garden, Meta turns digital citizenship into corporate feudalism—you do not own your audience, your reach, or your data.

Google – The Internet’s Gatekeeper

Controls the indexing of the entire internet, capturing over 90% of all searches globally.

Owns YouTube, which dominates 80% of the video-sharing market—controlling who gets visibility, who makes money, and what information spreads.

Kills independent websites by prioritizing corporate-approved content, leaving small publishers, independent voices, and alternative viewpoints struggling for visibility.

Mass data extraction turns users into commodities while hiding its tracking under the guise of "free services."

Google has transformed from a search engine into the filter for reality itself, deciding what billions of people see and believe.

Amazon – The Overlord of Commerce

Not only dominates e-commerce with a staggering 38% of the retail market, but also:

Controls global cloud computing through Amazon Web Services (AWS)—hosting everything from corporate servers to government systems.

Drives competitors out of business by undercutting prices, extracting seller data, and then launching its own knockoff products.

Exploits warehouse workers and delivery drivers, treating them as disposable labor while monopolizing logistics.

Amazon doesn’t just sell products—it owns the digital and physical infrastructure of modern commerce, making the economy dependent on its existence.

Spotify & Netflix – The Controllers of Culture

Spotify controls music streaming, while Netflix leads video streaming, both operating under a forever-renting model where users do not own what they pay for, and content can disappear at any time.

Artists & filmmakers lose control – Unlike selling physical albums, CDs, or DVDs, streaming services dictate pricing and pay pennies per stream. Artists are forced into a pay-per-click model where only the top 1% benefit.

No financial sustainability – Indie films and music used to be funded through direct sales, rentals, or physical media, giving creators real ownership over their work. Now, everything is controlled by platforms that take most of the profits.

Streaming algorithms kill discovery – Instead of audiences seeking out unique films and music, AI-powered recommendation engines push content designed to keep users engaged—prioritizing big-budget, formulaic content over diverse, experimental, or politically challenging work.

Filmmakers and musicians are permanently disempowered – Without control over distribution, creators must conform to corporate guidelines just to be seen.

Access to culture is no longer guaranteed – Unlike physical media, which you could keep forever, digital streaming platforms can remove films, albums, and books at any time, effectively erasing cultural works from history if they don’t fit corporate priorities.

This shift from ownership to indefinite corporate rental turns media consumption into a feudal system, where access to culture is paywalled, fragmented, and constantly controlled by corporate interests.

Streaming platforms have become the gatekeepers of culture, deciding which artists succeed, which films are seen, and what historical content is allowed to exist.

The Bigger Picture: Digital Feudalism

This concentration of power among a few billionaire tech owners is rapidly creating a global techno-feudalist economy. A handful of corporations own and control nearly all commerce, communications, information resources, and political discourse.

The fundamental problem:

Instead of a decentralized, user-empowered internet, we have a digital empire controlled by a few unelected billionaires—who decide what you can see, share, say, buy, and even think.

Under true free-market conditions, competition would allow new social platforms, search engines, marketplaces, and streaming services to thrive. Instead, Big Tech prevents interoperability, monopolizes distribution, extracts wealth from creators, and locks users into digital dependency.

This is not capitalism. This is feudalism.

Instead of kings and lords owning land, tech giants own the infrastructure of modern life—and everyone else must rent access to it.

Monopoly control is problematic in any market.

Concentrated ownership throttles innovation, eliminates meaningful entrepreneurship, and disables public accountability, personal autonomy, and any mechanisms for self-governance.

In communications this is even more dire.

Monopoly control erases an otherwise natural diversity of viewpoints, severely restricts access to information, and cements the mass manipulation of public opinion, manufacturing consent on an unprecedented scale, endangering the fundamental principles of a free and open society.