In recent years, several studies have analysed the skills and strategies that young people develop in digital environments and their relationship with cultural franchises within their transmedia universes. This article, clearly theoretical, aims to offer a critical analysis of the commodification of the creative work that young people produce on the web. Digital environments offer few possibilities for democratising public discourse. The online media production of teenagers is usually based on acts of false participation, since their possibilities of influence are very limited. At the same time, their actions in these digital environments are used to sustain a model of cognitive capitalism through processes of alienation and free labour that result in the advent of an information feudalism that transfers the goods of youth culture from the collective intellect into private hands. Keywords Youth culture; empowerment; commodification; fans; participatory culture; transliteracy.