It's easy to tell them apart because ethical and instrumental reasoning have distinct value systems.

It is irrelevant that Triplebyte's public profiles may have been instrumentally valuable for the company in the long run. No one arguing against them cared about that. But they did care about the ethical implications of that decision -- it was wrong even if it turned out to be good for Triplebyte, which it didn't because their plan was so brazenly unethical that they got a spanking.