Well, yeah. If I went straight to the press to trash the reputation of my client's product, rather than communicating internally first to help them proactively address the issues, I would expect to get fired.

Not that I am remotely interested in defending Meta, or optimistic that they would proactively address privacy issues. But I don't feel that sympathetic to the outsourcing company here either.

I don't know what happened behind the scenes. I'm just going off what is said and not said in the article. If I were whistleblowing about something like this, I would take pains to describe what measures I took internally before going public. I didn't see any of that here.

EDIT: Look, to be clear, I think it's bad that naive or uninformed people are buying video recorders from Meta and unintentionally having their private lives intruded on by a company that, based on its history, clearly can't be trusted to be a helpful, transparent partner to customers on privacy. I think it's good that the media is giving people a reminder of this. I think it's good that the sources said something, even though the consequences they suffered seem inevitable. But to me, there is nothing essentially new to be learned here, and I don't know what can or should be done to improve the situation. I think for now, the best thing for people to do is not buy Meta hardware if they have any desire for privacy. Maybe there are laws that could help, but what should be in the laws exactly? It's not obvious to me what would work. I suspect that some of the reason people buy these products is for data capture, and that will sometimes lead to sensitive stuff being recorded. What should the rules be around this and who should decide? Personally I don't know.

What makes you think the outsourcing firm didn't raise these concerns in email or meetings? You think these people wanted to lose jobs and income? That's irrational.

Why reflexively defend a massive tech corporation caught repeatedly violating the law?

There are transgressions severe enough that your duty to stop them is heavier than your responsibility to "the reputation of your client's product." Amazing this needs to be stated, frankly.

You would help conceal a crime against the people just because it's good business??

Congratulations, you have a bright future in politics and/or tech CEOing.

Proactively address the issues? Are you kidding me? This is not an issue that just happened to slip by; it is 100% by design. You're fooling no one.