Please elaborate in a couple examples how you think one could have done better if suggesting it is straw man. It feels like an effective logical conclusion of what the critiques usually say.
As someone else posted in the thread earlier, FSF has professional staff that work on PR etc. Please note that it is a small non-profit and they cannot afford a big marketing department, partially because their ideals hinder growth to a huge degree (e.g. even Linus is on record suggesting you should donate to EFF not FSF.) It is not surprising that big corporate donors will also avoid donating when they have pages undermining Netflix, Spotify, Google, FB, even Canonical/Ubuntu and pretty much everyone with deep pockets.
There's no need for any corporate conspiracy. RMS does a good job of looking bad on his own, and the FSF barely shows up on Linux sites. I don't think the likes of Netflix even know the FSF exists at this point, let alone bother allocating any effort towards fighting back.
