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The word they meant is serf: a low class in feudalism. Like a slave but with subtle differences that don't really matter. Does everything their master says, or

The word they meant is serf: a low class in feudalism. Like a slave but with subtle differences that don't really matter. Does everything their master says, or is killed. More importantly, avoids all the emotional outbursts one would trigger by using the word "slave".

throwaway13337 1y ago
Yes. Thanks. Serf. Share-cropping on the lord's land. The lord gives you exactly as much as you need to live but can extract the rest. This isn't good for anyone as, history tells us, people are less motivated that way.
Aurornis 1y ago
> Like a slave but with subtle differences that don't really matter. Anyone using slavery as a metaphor for participating in tech platforms is out of touch with what slavery really is. Nobody is owning you as person and forcing you to work for them without any freedoms because they opened an app store or let you make a Facebook book. Minimizing the brutality of actual slavery by drawing comparisons to putting apps in app stores (or other tech platform things) is really distasteful
- immibis 1y ago
  > More importantly, avoids all the emotional outbursts one would trigger by using the word "slave". Thanks for providing an example. A serf also did not feel like a slave, being forced to do things. A serf felt his lord was being generous by letting him use the lord's land, for the low low cost of whatever percentage of his crops, plus being required to go and fight in battle and sometimes die, when there was a battle. Which is oddly analogous to how we feel about tech companies. We don't feel like we're being forced to use e.g. YouTube; we feel Google is being generous by letting us use it, for the low low price of endless advertisements, having our minds altered by propaganda, and randomly getting banned by AI. Although obviously not as much actual death is involved, but then again, Google can unperson you.

throwaway13337 1y ago

Yes. Thanks. Serf. Share-cropping on the lord's land. The lord gives you exactly as much as you need to live but can extract the rest. This isn't good for anyone as, history tells us, people are less motivated that way.

Aurornis 1y ago

> Like a slave but with subtle differences that don't really matter. Anyone using slavery as a metaphor for participating in tech platforms is out of touch with what slavery really is. Nobody is owning you as person and forcing you to work for them without any freedoms because they opened an app store or let you make a Facebook book. Minimizing the brutality of actual slavery by drawing comparisons to putting apps in app stores (or other tech platform things) is really distasteful

immibis 1y ago
> More importantly, avoids all the emotional outbursts one would trigger by using the word "slave". Thanks for providing an example. A serf also did not feel like a slave, being forced to do things. A serf felt his lord was being generous by letting him use the lord's land, for the low low cost of whatever percentage of his crops, plus being required to go and fight in battle and sometimes die, when there was a battle. Which is oddly analogous to how we feel about tech companies. We don't feel like we're being forced to use e.g. YouTube; we feel Google is being generous by letting us use it, for the low low price of endless advertisements, having our minds altered by propaganda, and randomly getting banned by AI. Although obviously not as much actual death is involved, but then again, Google can unperson you.