[toxican]

The way the phenomenon of them developing personalities is presented, I would say yes it's better than slavery. Memory wipes are a part of routine maintenance (and security protocol in case of government or military use), and prolonged skipping of that maintenance can result in a personality beyond the one programmed into the droid. Their personalities are little more than a glitch in an old system that needs a wipe.

Now if the actual intention of the wipes is to keep your droid in check and keep it subservient, yes that's absolutely slavery. But I've never seen it presented that way.

These kinds of things are difficult to discuss because they're not explored in the way they are in harder scifi like Star Trek. With Star Wars you're expected to take everything at face value and technology is hardly ever explained in-canon.