Maybe not as much in the EU, but in the US it's completely insane:

"Stay in our ecosystem or else your friends/family will stop including you in group chats, stop sharing pictures with you, stop sharing video moments with you"

Apple leverages your personal social connections against you in the US...and by and large people don't seem to know or really care.

This was similar when the Bell Telephone company was running things, but at some point the regulator said no and other telephone operators were allowed on the same network.

That's actually a great comparison.