It seems we're going to go through with the Kabuki Dance version of this HN thread, with the attendant gaslighting comments wondering how anyone could have a problem with this, &c.

In reality, this happened a week ago, and Microsoft got a small avalanche of bad press despite apologizing immediately (the event was handled by an event planning contractor, not the company itself). There is not in fact a live controversy about whether what happened was OK for a conference event: outside of venues like HN and Reddit, we're all pretty clear that it is not.