@jlhertel@mastodon.technology
No, you will have to take my word for it. I had been a member of the FOSDEM "staff" aka year-around-volunteers team for many years, and these topics have been discussed in meetings.
FOSDEM defends its "neutrality" around the topic of Surveillance Capitalism, and does not see it as an actual problem that affects its visitors. This has always been the case, and sponsorship from big tech has been important to make the event grow every year to a larger scale.
I, and other people involved in FOSDEM in different ways, have tried to invert this tendency and propose a different way to look on how to cover the budget, to guarantee the autonomy on the program content. Diversity of topics and content that is still there today, may suffer by these unique sources of funding tomorrow.