Meta’s messaging is clearer.
“AI development won’t get us to transformative AI, we don’t think that AI safety will make a difference, we’re just going to optimize for profitability.”
So, Meta’s messaging is actually quite inconsistent. Yann LeCun says (when speaking to certain audiences, at least) that current AI is very dumb, and AGI is so far away it’s not worth worrying about all that much. Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, is quite vocal that their goal is AGI and that they’re making real progress towards it, suggesting 5+ year timelines.
Most people agree with Pause AI. Most people agree that AI might be a threat to humanity. The protests may or may not be effective, but I don’t really think they could be counterproductive. It’s not a “weird” thing to protest.