Paying to be the default is anti-competitive. Things like this, which directly and blatantly hinder competition, should be legislated away. I can conceive of a smaller but better product which just doesn't have the war chest to pay for positioning. That smaller but better product will have a much harder time growing if by default it is never exposed to the user. That pretty clearly has the potential to harm consumers.
You can argue "defaults can be changed", sure. However, we know from years of study on consumer behavior they don't. The activation energy just isn't there for users to switch defaults, and they likely don't even know they can. Rarely are defaults left because they're just so darn good.
I'd prefer things like this have a pop up during set up with a randomly ordered set of choices. To get on that list of choices might have a token fee (small sums of money are effective at weeding out garbage) required.
You can argue "defaults can be changed", sure. However, we know from years of study on consumer behavior they don't. The activation energy just isn't there for users to switch defaults, and they likely don't even know they can. Rarely are defaults left because they're just so darn good.
I'd prefer things like this have a pop up during set up with a randomly ordered set of choices. To get on that list of choices might have a token fee (small sums of money are effective at weeding out garbage) required.