Prioritization. It’s something that’s built into nearly every technology, particularly that which services network traffic. Rate shaping. Queuing. Coloring bits.
We do a lot of interesting gyrations with technology to ensure that some user traffic and requests are more equal than others.
Today we still do the same thing, but it’s done in different ways. Software as a Service charges a premium for “extra” API calls, for example, and if you want access to premium content there’s sure to be a paywall in front of it.
But that’s at the service level. It’s not the same as prioritization of individual users; of affording specific users privileges of some kind based either on their position (No, no, the CEO can’t have his e-mail be delayed – never apply bandwidth limiting policies to him) or on their customer status (They’re a “gold” customer, make sure their requests go to the fastest application instance).