Jysin
answered originally but I will add on some more detail. I think you are mixing up how things work with publicly traded companies and that is leading to your confusion. I will spend a few minutes trying to make it more clear.
Shareholders own the company. Be it one share or 1 million shares. Yes ofttimes the company itself might own shares, quite often this tends to be a very small percentage of the total float (all shares outstanding). Most often, a high share price really helps the company when it wants to make an acquisition via shares as it makes their shares more valuable thus they need to give up less equity to purchase the other company.
The board of directors do not work for the company, they are selected by the owners (the major shareholders) to act as their agents (known and the principal and agent relationship) in watching the employees of the company to ensure the owners are getting maximum benefit from their stock ownership. It is this board who determines the compensation of the CEO (top employee). Depending on the company the board members may hold significant share positions or very few. In Twitter's case the board owns almost no shares except for Jack.
I explain the above to better explain the next part. As an investor, your buying or selling stock doesnt impact the company (in 99.9%) of situations. By you I mean us. When Elon Musk or Jim Cramer or Kathie announce stock moves they aren't impacting the company per se, but instead lots of other investors begin making moves to piggy back. Its this volume that moves prices as it tends to create an imbalance between buyers and sellers which can cause larger swings in price action (supply and demand). Nothing we as retailers do, Even Scrooge McDuck
Blazin
, can move a share price even a cent.
Options: Options are nothing more than a contract to buy or sell a stock at an agreed upon price at an agreed upon date. You are correct that trading options doesn't initially involve taking actual ownership of the shares (for the most part). But its still putting you on the hook for the trade. Never ever make a trade for any single reason other than "I will make money on this trade". Imagine how shitty it would feel to trade an option on META or GOOGL and then find the trade goes the other way and you end up being assigned those shares. You would own something you despise and most likely at a financial loss as well.
Shorting: Shorting shares is selling shares you dont own but instead borrow. Again those of us on this board can have zero impact shorting a company. Shorting a company's stock not due to its financials but for emotional reasons is a good way to end up on the road to bankruptcy. We had a regular poster here who played the short game. He stopped posting here. Based on the trades he was making his losses playing short had to be exceedingly painful.
tldr: If you want to piss on a company, the market isnt the vehicle. Dont use their products/services, protest, piss on them via social media, use their competitors etc. At the end of the day, a company is just a financial instrument. The only people involved are employees, investors, vendors, supplies etc. I won't directly own cigarette companies because of my feelings about them. It is much more difficult with Beg Tech because of their size and inclusion in virtually every single index fund. You would have to avoid investing in big caps entirely.