LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman Plays the Age Card

About 13 minutes into this (otherwise boring) video from last year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman makes the incredibly dismissive and simplistic claim that Internet privacy concerns are merely "old people issues."

And apart from his disagreeable attitude about personal privacy, is Hoffman aware that age discrimination in employment is illegal?



TheLadders.com CEO Marc Cenedella, who flagged this video on his blog, sums it up:

...privacy issues aren't old people issues, they're normal people issues.

So I suppose I find it offensive that a billionaire founder, speaking at Davos — the world's most discriminative "old boys' network" event, held each year in the Swiss Alps — ridicules your concerns in such a condescending way.

Cendella also says that contrary to Hoffman's assertions, most Internet executives take individual privacy protections very seriously.