It's appropriate to protest within a company, because human beings are free to choose what is important enough to their own personal values to be worth taking a

It's appropriate to protest within a company, because human beings are free to choose what is important enough to their own personal values to be worth taking actions that will have consequences, and to choose which actions they believe are worth doing. But certainly the base case expectation people should have is that such actions will result in being fired. And personally I also agree with you that this does not turn out to be a very effective form of protest. But people get to make their own choices!