Megan McArdle:

Zuckerberg had shifted his company away from the open platform of the browser and onto a closed system where Apple set the terms. For a long time, that was a very good deal for Facebook — but when Apple decided to alter the deal, Facebook didn’t really have much recourse. 

There’s a lesson in that, even if you aren’t planning to launch a media site, or a social media platform. Our ferocious arguments about who should be kicked off Spotify, or Twitter, are fundamentally about the same problem: So much of our public life takes place on a handful of technology platforms, where what we see and whom we reach is determined by policies set by some faceless programmer in Silicon Valley. We are all of us tenants of the digital manor — even, it turns out, some of the lords. 

See also my brief reflection on our manorial elite.

The lesson Megan identifies is one I am always seeking to internalize. For the last few years I have been trying to move more and more of my life out of the control of our tech overlords. I read less on the Kindle and buy more codexes; I stream less music and movies and buy more CDs and Blu-Rays; I hang out on the open web and avoid the walled gardens. (I really enjoyed Jonathan Goldstein’s podcast Heavyweight but when it went Spotify-only I cheerfully gave it up.) I don’t want my access to art I love and ideas that interest me to be determined by the whims of the Lords of the Manor. Of course, this means that I have to be more discriminating: I can’t buy everything I might want to read or watch or listen to, so I have to make a point of buying what I think I stand a good chance of experiencing repeatedly. Which is also in itself a win for me, isn’t it?