Users of the World, Unite! | Re-inventing The Syndicalist Movement in the Techno-Feudal Era
The 2023 Reddit API protests — A New Form of Labor Organization?
In June 2023, Reddit users and moderators organized an unprecedented protest against the platform’s decision to significantly increase API pricing, effectively killing many third-party apps like Apollo, RIF, and Sync. The move, seen as a corporate crackdown on independent developers and community-driven moderation tools, sparked outrage across the site.
The protest resembled a digital labor strike, despite Reddit users not being traditional employees. Instead, the backbone of the platform — its volunteer moderators — used their power to shut down thousands of subreddits by making them private. This self-organized action demonstrated a new form of collective resistance in digital spaces, where unpaid laborers (moderators) coordinated to disrupt a platform’s revenue model, aiming to pressure management into reversing its decision.
Thousands of communities, including major ones like r/gaming, r/pics, and r/aww, went dark for at least 48 hours, while some subreddits “went dark” in creative ways, such as switching to NSFW content or making their pages unusable.
Despite its scale, the protest ultimately failed. Reddit leadership, led by CEO Steve Huffman, refused to negotiate, dismissing the movement as a temporary inconvenience. Reddit also pressured moderators to reopen their communities by threatening to replace them with new, compliant mods. While the protest did not achieve its goals, it showcased a new form of resistance that mirrors labor strikes. It proved that online communities reliant on unpaid labor can act collectively to disrupt platform capitalism, even if their bargaining power remains weak without structural leverage.
In order to understand more about what these new types of protests/strikes say about our new socio-economic model, we must further investigate the material changes our mode of production went through.
Techno-Feudalism: How The Internet Replaced Profit With Rent
Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis claims that capitalism has already killed itself and turned into techno-feudalism: a system in which owners of platforms extract cloud rent from ‘cloud serfs’, the petit-bourgeoisie and capitalists all at the same time, creating a new hierarchy of power.
A platform is not a market, but a digital fiefdom, resembling the traditional fiefdoms in the middle ages. Varoufakis claims that once you enter something like Amazon, you have exited capitalism. Imagine walking down the city-centre and looking around at the stores and all the shops being controlled by one single person, who decides who is able to buy, who is able to sell, what prices are charged and even what your eyes see. This is how platforms like Amazon work: a single person’s algorithm decides what you can see and extracts surplus-value not only through profits, but also through rent, resembling the feudal mode of production.
Amazon is an example in which cloud capitalists extract rent from regular capitalists: every business selling on Amazon gives 40% of their earnings to Amazon who has monopolized the market through the network effect. This creates a tripartite structure of class exploitation where the traditional bourgeoise exploits the traditional proletariat while the new techno-feudal class (“cloudalists”) exploit the traditional bourgeoise and the proletariat, indirectly, as in the diagram below:
Spotify and Youtube are examples in which cloud capitalists extract rent from the self-employed (petit-bourgeoise): Spotify takes around 30% of the earnings of every musician who streams their music on their platform. Google takes 45% of the AdSense revenue of every Youtuber. Google Maps is an example in which every user is a cloud serf, enriching the app by feeding it data without receiving anything in return.
We, then, live in a time where the traditional Marxist class conflict between the employer and employee class has been supplemented with a new class conflict between the user and the platform-owner class, where the user class can include both the proletariat, as well as the petit-bourgeoise and the traditional bourgeoise (for example: small businesses selling on Amazon).
McKenzie Wark’s concept of the “vectorialist class” further elucidates this new digital hierarchy. Unlike traditional capitalists, who accumulate wealth through the ownership of factories and land, the vectorialist class controls the vectors of information — platforms, algorithms, and digital infrastructure. Their power does not come from producing goods but from owning the networks that mediate all economic and social transactions.
Under vectorialism, control over information flows replaces control over means of production as the dominant form of economic power. This explains why YouTube, Spotify, and Uber can extract such large rents: they own the digital vectors through which content, services, and commerce must pass.
The Network Effect: Why Competition Can’t Bring Prices Down
A key feature reinforcing the power of these digital feudal lords is the network effect. The network effect is a phenomenon whereby a platform’s value increases exponentially as more users join it. It is a self-reinforcing cycle: the more people use a platform, the more indispensable it becomes; the more indispensable it is, the more people are drawn to it. This dynamic creates a formidable barrier to competition.
Take YouTube as a prime example. Despite the platform’s notorious 45% cut on AdSense revenue, creators remain locked into its ecosystem because its vast network ensures maximum exposure and monetization potential. Attempting to migrate to an alternative platform would mean forfeiting this network advantage — a sacrifice few are willing to make, as the alternative simply does not offer the same reach or engagement.
Or consider Uber: if a better competitor to Uber with cheaper prices comes around, no one will initially use that platform, since there are no drivers, and there are no drivers because there are no consumers, and there are no consumers because there are no drivers yet…
The network effect thus creates an infinite regress: no one will join a competitor’s platform because it lacks users, and no one will leave the dominant platform because it is the only place where everyone gathers. This dynamic reinforces the status quo, making it nearly impossible for market competition to naturally drive down the exploitative fees imposed by digital platforms.
Rebirth of Syndicalism: Organizing for a Digital, International Resistance
In the face of such pervasive exploitation, the old models of labor organization and protest must be reimagined for the digital era. The syndicalist movement, which historically mobilized workers through direct action and collective bargaining, must now evolve to encompass digital solidarity on an international scale. The tools of digital communication — social media, online forums, and blockchain technologies — offer unprecedented opportunities for organizing across geographical and sectoral boundaries.
To counteract the concentrated power of the digital feudal lords, we must consider several coordinated strategies, with the following being a few examples:
- Artists on Spotify:
Independent artists from around the world should form robust “artist unions.” These unions would have the power to coordinate a mass withdrawal of content from Spotify — a digital strike that would force the platform to renegotiate revenue shares. If a significant number of artists remove their music simultaneously, Spotify will be compelled to adjust its exploitative 30% fee structure to avoid losing its content base. - Small Capitalists on Amazon:
Small business owners and independent sellers on Amazon should band together into business unions. A coordinated halt in sales on Amazon — effectively a collective boycott — would demonstrate the platform’s dependency on these small sellers. The disruption would expose the excessive 40% fee as unsustainable and force Amazon to reconsider its business model. - Content Creators on YouTube:
Content creators on YouTube must form dedicated unions — “YouTuber unions” — to reclaim a fair share of their revenue. By coordinating a mass removal of content or threatening a digital strike, creators can leverage the network effect against the platform. Such collective action would force Google to reexamine its current 45% cut under the pressure of losing its content and, consequently, its advertising revenue. - Gig Workers on Uber and Similar Platforms:
Drivers and gig workers on platforms like Uber and Fiverr need to organize traditional labor strikes alongside digital protests. A synchronized cessation of work would not only disrupt service but also force these platforms to negotiate for a higher share of earnings. By demonstrating their collective indispensability, gig workers can push for more equitable terms in an industry that currently extracts between 20% and 30% of their income.
The battle against techno-feudalism is inherently international. Digital platforms operate across borders, and the exploitation they perpetrate affects users regardless of nationality. Therefore, a successful resistance must be global, rooted in the shared experience of exploitation and the universal need for a fairer distribution of digital wealth. The movement would not only target excessive fees but also broader practices that undermine digital rights and economic fairness. It would serve as a watchdog against any platform decision that increases rent extraction or diminishes user autonomy.
The struggle ahead is immense, but the potential for change is equally vast. Capitalism has traditionally dependent on the fact that the working class’ negotiating power is smaller when each laborer negotiates individually and have always prevented all attempts, such as labor unions, to organize collectively and negotiate unitedly. This is a call to arms for all who labor in the digital realm. It is a call for solidarity, for the recognition that true innovation and creativity cannot flourish under the yoke of platform-capitalism. The platform-owned class will not lose its position of power unless the users of those platforms stand together in solidarity.
Users of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
