One Face of Technofeudalism: Lordly Jurisdiction over Creator Status

This paper develops an institutional interpretation of one creator-facing form of technofeudalism in content services. The formation mechanism begins with an infrastructure gap: private development of Internet services did not produce a widely deployed, provider-independent public layer for persistent creator identity, addressability, and relationship continuity. Provider-specific accounts consequently came to perform those missing identity-layer functions. This functional substitution fused two distinct objects: a creator's continuing digital identity and a provider-specific service account. Creator digital identity includes the persistent public identity through which the creator is recognized and addressed and through which recipient-consented audience relationships continue; a platform account is the provider-specific service relationship used for authentication, settings, billing, enforcement, and other service administration. When the substituted identity function becomes technically bound to the account, ordinary platform powers over the account—such as suspension, termination, conditioning, or deletion—acquire identity-level effects. Account disposition becomes the de facto disposition of the creator's digital identity. In a legal vacuum that fails to separate these objects, this conversion produces quasi-sovereign lordly jurisdiction over creator status. Once such jurisdiction exists, weak duties, review, and remedies can make it more arbitrary, expansive, and durable. The normative principle is legal separation: a provider may terminate an account, but it may not terminate the creator. Creator identity, independent addressability, and recipient-consented audience relationships must survive provider substitution. A bounded historical comparison distinguishes abolishing lordly entitlement from merely supervising it, and the proposed hosting–publication separation provides a concrete institutional implementation for public content services.