But it is if you are viewing advertisements. That is the argument that Yanis makes in the book anyway, heavily simplified and removed of a lot of context.

The point is that you can't choose what you read or watch. We still can somewhat - we can install adblock and decide what media to consume. But instead of a "capitalist" effort to simply try to to invest in better "content", you could make the case that cloud companies are simply holding content hostage and demanding more of your attention, money, and time. Even at the expense of civil rights like privacy. It is stuff that gets talked about every day on Hackernews. It isn't that far fetched that antagonistic serfdom is basically the type of relationship large tech conglomerates treat their users. Dark UI patterns. EULAs.

I would agree that it doesn't make sense on it's face, but only in the context of a comprehensive macroeconomic analysis. That's what the good deal of the book is about.