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alextcone Apple I mean phone companies causing bad things in society and being blamed for them is literally the quintessential antitrust example en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System ?
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alextcone Apple And it was similarly intensely controversial at the time to criticize a company for whom its' scale seemed a benefit to all nytimes.com/1984/01/01/us/bell-system-breakup-opens-era-of-great-expectations-and-great-concern.html ...
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alextcone And most examinations of foundational "hacker culture" of that period start with the intense and well justified concern by counter culture activists around the organization of the phone system and how it is managed. Most notably Levy's Hackers and Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown.
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alextcone And similarly, the concern was high around the abuse of the phone systems by state actors. The use of modems + phone systems during the cold war by enemy states (specifically Russia) is a central point of Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg. Everything old is new again.