If you want to understand how the internet reshapes society, pay attention to where the money ends up. In China’s food delivery business, Meituan takes a cut of nearly every meal delivered to your door. In ride-hailing, Didi does the same with every trip across town. What’s really changed here? It’s tempting to say that these are just efficient new marketplaces, digitally lubricating old commerce. But look closer, and you see that Meituan and Didi are something older and more insidious: landlords in a new domain.
In traditional societies, power came from owning land. If you wanted to grow food or build anything, you had to pay the person who controlled the ground. The digital age was supposed to make things more free and open, but now we have different “land”: flows of users, data, and attention. Platforms like Meituan and Didi own the “land” where almost all the business happens.
Small restaurants, for example, once depended on foot traffic or regulars. Now, without visibility on Meituan, they’re almost invisible. Most of their revenue originates and is processed on the platform, and Meituan’s commission—often 20–30%—determines whether they barely survive or have to close up shop. Likewise, delivery workers and drivers must play by opaque platform rules: labor long, earn per gig, and race algorithms designed to maximize efficiency, not fairness. The platform can change prices, incentives, or even who gets orders—instantly and unilaterally.
This is digital landlordism. The new landlords are not evil by design—they create value, orchestrate vast logistical networks, and do legitimately enable millions of jobs. But they also set the rent, and that rent has been slowly rising. The platform doesn’t own restaurants or delivery bikes; it owns attention, trust, and habit. You can choose to “go around” the platform, but only at the cost of near-total invisibility.
Marx talked about alienation: people separated from the product of their work, their process, and even their place in society. Today’s digital platforms introduce a subtler, algorithmic alienation. Workers and merchants feel powerless, not because of a single overlord, but because of an invisible web of rules and feedback loops optimizing only for the platform’s profit.
There’s no obvious fix. Regulation helps on the margins; competition sometimes breaks “monopoly rents”—but the underlying economics are sticky. The best we can do for now is be aware of this new landlordism, demand transparency from platforms, and remember: every advance in efficiency or convenience comes with a new way for someone to collect rent.
The internet allowed us to build empires of bits instead of acres. But no matter the century or the substrate, someone always ends up owning the “land”—and someone else ends up paying for it.