The article quotes Donovan as disliking the term "attention economy because, she's reported as saying, "That gives far too much agency to the user", but that's not what attention as a resource is about. There was never really a time when discussion around the term implied the users have any agency in determining where to "spend" their attention.
As a commodity, attention is aggregated by targeted suggestions, tuned to manipulate behavior based on the motivations of the individual. Never have "choices" in the attention economy been about giving people control over what they see and "like", but about giving people stories, tweets, videos, blogs, etc that direct their attention by only giving users what they already prefer, not showing them ideas outside their bubble. The only "choice", such as it is, that an individual can make to exercise agency is to decline the invitation.
As a commodity, attention is aggregated by targeted suggestions, tuned to manipulate behavior based on the motivations of the individual. Never have "choices" in the attention economy been about giving people control over what they see and "like", but about giving people stories, tweets, videos, blogs, etc that direct their attention by only giving users what they already prefer, not showing them ideas outside their bubble. The only "choice", such as it is, that an individual can make to exercise agency is to decline the invitation.