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Introducing a new phrase via my brother "digital feudalism" -- this is the use of technological power to control platforms and flows of information.
For example, if everyone is using your social media app to get news (and most people now get their news on social media) you could throttle news that is harmful to you and promote news that helps your political goals.
This could, in theory, be done in ways that would be hard to prove that is happening, although currently it's out in the open.
During real feudalism technology such as armor and steel weapons along with training could make a knight or solider dangerous enough that a dozen angry peasants could do little to stop him.
Knights had petty power, due to their proximity to the real power of kings and nobility. Sometimes a king might know how to use a sword, but the most powerful kings did not. They knew how to secure the loyalty of knights.
Does this translate to the digital realm?
Peter W Flint @futurebird Yanis Varoufakis has written a whole book about this
@futurebird I think we can use this as a lens to see the spread of dark enlightenment/neoreactionary ideas and effective altruism – these are all reruns at the divine right of kings except the invisible hand belongs to the market rather than a more theological deity. Especially once you attach to material power the description and definition of a kind of “higher” royal person, there will always be people who want to be the knights and barons. Today as in history, there will be some self-interested, thinking they or their descendants could ascend to royalty though service or guile, and some who fully buy the pitch.
Mari 
@paralithode @futurebird .... oh. oh yeah this is a horrifying rhyme 
@futurebird i think there's a physical element to this what with data centers and the concentration of servers in farms
@draNgNon @futurebird Except what they hold is basically worthless. It's all smoke and mirrors to dupe investors and founders. Nobody actually needs any of that to run a productive business. They need it to lie that they're going to be the next Google (or now, that they're doing "AI"). Actual business needs can almost always be met with a couple high-end servers (or less) on-premises.
@draNgNon @futurebird The actual domain of value they control is not physical data centers and servers, but the userbases of services and software that's been transformed into services.
The Notorious Kyo @futurebird well, under such a system the nature of power is psychological coercion.
If a small enough number of people control all our information systems, then they can achieve a high enough level of environmental control to behaviorally condition people, thus modifying their thinking, beliefs systems and preferences so they “voluntarily” do what those people want.
Basically, you can turn society into a cult designed to benefit you by brainwashing everybody.
This kind of psychological control can potentially even be automated via emotionally manipulative algorithms, surveillance systems that monitor everyone’s behavior and discover their individual psychological weaknesses for personalized conditioning, and even by carefully controlling who is in who’s social circle via directing focus and attention away from individuals whose perspective threatens the system.
@futurebird recent claims by certain platforms that they actually own the user accounts associated with a certain bankrupt slanderer certainly feel feudalistic in nature…
Algorithms can be weaponized.
Corporate-kings secure the loyalty of knight-engineers who craft, monitor, and improve those algorithms.
Some ways to overcome these digital technologies:
@futurebird I guess it could. You could look at digital centralized platforms like X and Facebook and YouTube as the realms run by the Kings etc.
You could look at Digital Magnates or major influencers as your knights who are loyal to that platform due to the ability to monetize and gain reward for their support.
And we are all the little peasants who don't quite all possess the individual skills or money to overthrow the leadership?
Power is owned by information today, not military.
@futurebird Knights = the nobility.