It would surprise me if this was new. I bet this kind of thing has happened for as long as business has happened, but the owned-resource being built on was more likely real estate, whether it was some lord who could kick a peasant off his land or some industrialist who could shut down a shop owner in the town he built for his factory.
If anything, we might be less susceptible to it now. It would make a fascinating study, anyway.
The thing is that the instead of it being real estate with maybe 1,000 tenants, its a service that has hundreds of millions of users. Facebook has over a billion. I don't know if anyone has had the power to shut off access to that many people before.
If anything, we might be less susceptible to it now. It would make a fascinating study, anyway.