This argument suggests that by sponsoring conferences, companies can shape their content. That may be true for big commercial exhibitions, but I don’t see how it works for academic meetings. For those meetings, the financial backing is confirmed years in advance, while the actual program is set six months or so before the event. And at CS like conferences, the content is determined by independent reviewers. So I can imagine that corporate sponsors might shape content by stopping support of conferences with low quality papers, but otherwise they have essentially no role in what is presented, other than providing some high profile keynote speakers that might increase conference visibility.
I came here to say the same thing. I've been on multiple program committees for multiple conferences and it would be laughable to claim sponsors have any influence over what gets published at a conference.
Sponsors have much more direct (and visible) influence over, you know, sponsorship of the research itself. But even there, corporate sponsorship is only one slice (and a relatively small one) of overall CS funding. There are plenty of government or independent sponsors who would be happy to fund research that is contrary to big corporate interests.
Yeah. It's truer of non-academic conferences which often even have sponsor slots. But even there, there's at least some effort not to have product pitches because if they tilt too far in that direction, people just won't attend. Conferences need to maintain some base level of quality/utility or they fade away.
