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That meant that they could decide which services and features you had, and could ask the government to intervene to block competitors who added services and features they didn't like. They wielded this power without restraint or mercy, targeting, for example, the #HushAPhone, a cup you stuck to your phone receiver to muffle your speech and prevent eavesdropping:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone

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privacy enhancing telephone device

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

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This is an early and important example of #PredatoryInclusion: the monopoly carriers delivered universal service to all of us, but that was a prelude to an ugly. parasitic, rent-seeking way of doing business:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/predatory-inclusion-a-long-view-of-the-race-for-profit/

It wasn't just the phone that came with an unlimited price-tag: everything you did with the phone was also a la carte, like the bananas-high long-distance charges, or even per-minute charges for *local* calls.

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Predatory Inclusion: A Long View of the Race for Profit

NB: This post is part of a series in our Race for Profit symposium. Read all posts here. The ascending slope of our current housing crisis is a good vantage point from which to think about Keeanga…

^{LPE Project}

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But there's another side to this: a feed composed of things from people is *fungible*. Theoretically, you could uproot that feed from one platform and settle it in another one - if everyone you follow on Twitter set up an account on Mastodon, you could use a tool like #Movetodon to refollow them there and get the same feed:

https://www.movetodon.org/

A feed that is controlled by a company using secret algorithms is much harder for a rival to replicate.

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Movetodon: Finds your Twitter Friends on Mastodon

^{www.movetodon.org}

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That's why #Spotify is so hellbent on getting you to listen to #playlists, not albums. Your favorite albums are the same everywhere, but playlists are integrated into services.

But there's another side to this playlistification of feeds: playlists and other recommendation algorithms are #chokepoints: they are a way to durably interpose a company between a creator and their audience. Where you have chokepoints, you get #ChokepointCapitalism:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

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(no title)

a book about why creative labor markets are rigged - and how to unrig them Competition is supposed to be fundamental to capitalism.

^{chokepointcapitalism.com}