In an era where content creators often build audiences on platforms they don't control, Digitalage is developing media infrastructure to shift the balance of power. The company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hop-on, Inc. (OTCID: HPNN), aims to provide creators with more transparency and control over how their work is protected, distributed, and monetized. This comes as creators increasingly face challenges from algorithm changes, monetization rule shifts, and opaque moderation on major platforms.
Peter Michaels, founder and chairman of Digitalage, encapsulates the problem: “Reach is a permission that can be revoked. Ownership is something that survives the permission being revoked.” Creators often own the content they produce but do not own the audience relationship, recommendation systems, payment rails, or appeals processes that platforms control. When a search engine changes ranking algorithms, publishers can lose visibility overnight. When social platforms alter monetization policies, creators can see their primary income disappear without recourse.
Digitalage's solution is to build media infrastructure that records who created a media asset, when it was created, and what rights and controls apply. This information is intended to carry through live broadcasting, replay distribution, searchable archives, and creator monetization in a single workflow. For live content, the aim is to preserve identity, provenance, and rights information as part of the media record from creation through replay.
Transparent moderation is another pillar of Digitalage's framework. The company emphasizes clear rules, visible decisions, human review, meaningful appeals, and enforcement focused on harmful conduct rather than the identity or viewpoint of the speaker. Creators should be able to ask: Who made the decision? Who can see the affected content? What specific rule was applied? Was the action based on harmful conduct or merely the identity or viewpoint of the speaker? Digitalage's published Community Rules state that automated systems may act during live broadcasts when repeated detections indicate a potential violation, but creators can request post-action human review. Uploads and replays flagged for consequential enforcement receive human review, and eligible decisions can be appealed.
The company has completed application testing and is currently in an invite-only launch, refining the experience and onboarding initial creator cohorts. Its current product scope includes live broadcasting, replays, and video-on-demand, with programming across news, sports, events, and faith. Under its Genesis Creator Pilot, announced June 3, participating creators are eligible to receive 85% of gross subscription revenue, while Digitalage retains a 15% Platform Infrastructure Fee. Creators can also earn 50% of net advertising revenue generated by their content, subject to program terms.
Digitalage's strategy is to partner with creators who already have established communities and give those audiences reasons to stay and return. The value doesn't end when the stream does; the system is designed to preserve live events as replays that remain searchable and indexable, potentially supporting additional monetization after the broadcast.
This approach addresses a fundamental issue in the creator economy: access is not ownership. By building an infrastructure layer that gives creators more durable control over their content, distribution, and monetization, Digitalage aims to empower creators to build on rented digital land without being at the mercy of platform changes. As the company continues to refine its offering, it could reshape how creators think about their relationships with digital platforms.
