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I think there is another psychological factor at work, which is that people feel more critical toward, or at least more free to express criticism of, very succe

I think there is another psychological factor at work, which is that people feel more critical toward, or at least more free to express criticism of, very successful people or orgs. When Apple was struggling for success against Microsoft a decade ago, it seemed like a lot of tech folks gave them a pretty big benefit of the doubt. OS releases had problems then, but the reaction was usually balanced by a sense of, "this is progress though." Now that they are the most valuable company in the world, there's not really any benefit of the doubt anymore. I think a similar effect was at work in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The widespread assumption was that Clinton was by far the stronger candidate, so there was very little benefit of the doubt for anything.

zbentley 9y ago
I think the name for that is "Survivorship Bias" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias), though it doesn't inherently have to do with being critical of noticeable/successful entities; just focusing on them.
scarface74 9y ago
In 2008, Apple wasn't exactly struggling. The iPod reached its peak in December 2008, the iPhone had just been released and it had a market cap of $500 billion. https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/12/02/apple-inc-valuation-passes-500-billion-half-the-market-cap-imagined-last-year https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/12/02/apple-inc-valuati...