Is society in charge of them? Or is it a small collective of people?

Edit: Typo

Society could take control back. It's not impossible. History has examples where people took control away from small collectives, although it wasn't always strictly lawfuly or even peaceful.

To take it to the extreme, billions of virtual dollars wouldn't offer any protection against a determined lynch mob at the front door.

More realistically, there is a lot of power in showing up in big numbers and protesting. It is beyond me why especially US culture doesn't accept that as an option these days.