When the internet is being used as a "right" or commodity like food and your digital persona, which you don't "own", is being used to profit someone else, and your "right" to it is revoked if you choose to "own" it, the metaphor is apt.
No, it's not apt at all. When your digital self allows for your physical self to be whipped, starved, or forced to mate in the name of profit, it will be apt.
Sure, it's not all rainbows and unicorns. But let's not weaken our arguments with ludicrous hyperbole.
It's not considering that everyone's privacy is being violated. You have no rights if it's in digital form. Your speech is monitored. You are physically removed from a country because of a misunderstood tweet. [An example : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312].
The threats of violence and detention against your will by nation states are real, and having Google and other tech companies being complicit is scary. Why are they complicit? Because of the same threats of violence.
We are slaves. Maybe not whipped, maybe not starved, but threatened, poisoned and our children's children are in debt slavery because of the rainbows and unicorns we think is just around the corner if we borrow a little bit more. And by the sweat of their brow will we pay for the NSA / GCHQ, the wars and such like.
On one side: people as literal property, with no rights. They and their children are treated no better than intelligent cattle, and their continued survival is a function of their current economic worth.
On the other hand: a private company offers you a free service which if you may voluntarily opt-in to. If you so choose, they will use to collect information of value to try and sell you stuff. You may then choose, or not, to engage with those advertisements. In many cases, there are trivial options to hinder or reduce this tracking, including options provided by the companies themselves.
It is certainly hyperbole, and succeeds only in (a) demeaning further those millions of people trapped in real slavery, and (b) weakening any arguments on the negative aspects of internet surveillance.
