I used this analogy in a narrative allegory after reading pillars of the earth.
Might be a little long, but I liked it in the end (and my fiancé drew pictures for it which I think turned out great).
https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook...
I like this part:
> Jonathan looked upset. “Why do the knights support this work? They are skilled farmers, couldn’t they tend their own land?”
“The earls offer the knights a comfortable life, high salary, and pleasant work (though curiously poor housing). Life outside the earldom is uncertain and difficult.”
“Do no knights strike out on their own?”
Philip was quiet for a moment. He pointed across a vast vista to a large castle in the distance adjacent to that of their own Earl Zuckerberg’s. “That is the castle of Sir Brian Acton of the former Earldom of WhatsApp. Sir Acton was an idealistic farmer who rejected the ways of our earl. He promised the serfs he would take no part of their data harvest they produced from the land he provided them, and instead the serfs even paid him a small cash fee for his protection. He had no knights to watch and report on his people and no heralds spreading pronouncements.”
“What happened?”
“He was too successful. Earl Zuckerberg saw many of his serfs begin to leave his lands to work the lands of Sir Acton (at the time he was known as Farmer Acton). This was a risk to the power of Zuckerberg’s earldom, since an earl without serfs to tend to the data fields has no harvest to interest others. In the end he offered Sir Acton a knightship and such enormous wealth that he could not refuse. It’s said he now lives in that vast castle alone, is rarely seen, and rarely speaks. The serfs that were in agreement with him now belong to Earl Zuckerberg as they had before, their deal was broken, and once again they tend to our earl’s data harvest.”