You are mistaking citizen action and corporate lobbying, especially the way it's done in the US. It's always Big Companies, with vested interests in keeping the statue quo, because their CEOs lack the creativity to move forward and has the shareholder have no incentive to ask him to do otherwise, spend millions of dollars, target to specific senator or house representatives whose votes will help and only help the big co...
We are not talking about what your friend did, or what you are supporting. Those are actions that will move the society forward.
There isn't a check box on the LLC form that says all your actions from now on must be evil. There are going to be citizen interest groups you disagree with and corporations you agree with. And a lot of high-profile lobbying is corporations arguing against each other.
If there was a simple heuristic like whatever corporations want is bad and whatever individuals want is good, then governing wouldn't be hard. Policy would be easy and not full of complex dilemmas with multiple competing interest groups that all have roughly prima facie coherent perspectives and interests.
Some of these groups will of course be wrong on further examination, but sorting that out isn't some one line test.
Big companies don’t need lobbyists to influence government. Environmental organizations do.
Look at Amazon. They put out bids for a place to build HQ2, and states fall over themselves to accommodate them. Corporate donations to candidates are already illegal. It doesn’t matter—the CEO of a big employer can just call up a Congressman and say “hey, I employ 10,000 constituents in your district. It’d be a shame if anything happened to their jobs.”
There was a point in the 90s when tech companies weren't interested in politics so much. They mostly tried to be better at technology and business and stay out of that game.
Things like anti-trust suits, vague IP law, and ___domain name disputes disabused tech companies of that notion quickly. They couldn't afford not to get involved in lobbying.
We are not talking about what your friend did, or what you are supporting. Those are actions that will move the society forward.