Platform gatekeeping power now operates at a global scale unlike colonial toll towns

Evidence

Digital platforms give gatekeeping power to their owners, much as the navigation routes of historical colonialism empowered the towns near where goods had to land. But because of the connected nature of the online environment, today’s gatekeeping power has consequences on a vast global scale, not just a local or national one. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 200

Categorization

• XREF: The colonial-toll-route analogy directly parallels the reader’s ADDENDUM/attention-school material on platform gatekeeping — this is the rival school’s core structural claim about where platform power comes from. — connects to: Postwar US power substituted a global base network for direct colonial control — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 96
• SEED: Could become an essay contrasting colonial geography-based gatekeeping (tolls, ports, land choke-points) with digital topology-based gatekeeping — where the modern equivalent of the toll town lives in routing infrastructure.

Broader Connections

• Postwar US power substituted a global base network for direct colonial control #expands (0.75) — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 96