When I was growing up the internet was a place to be liberated from the world say what you want to say, be whoever you want and form genuine communities with shared interests. Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable. Novel unique websites coded manually by hobbyists running servers for free in the commons allowing people access to the free flow of information under the banner of “information should be free” has largely gone away with corpratisation. I miss the days when the internet was populated largely by nerds aiming to make a better world not this controlled censored hell hole of profiteering.
“Enslave” is a bit harsh, considering there are about 38-50 million people who are currently slaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century
We’re choosing to allow a lot of the things these companies are doing to us; but we could choose to walk away at the cost of some shiny things.
“Choosing” something doesn’t always prevent slavery. Wage slavery, for example, is a perfectly reasonable use of the word, though still not as bad as chattel slavery or other forms of slavery. It basically implies the non-existence of meaningful choice. However, you’re perfectly correct to say the OP is not enslaved in this case.
