Was My Facebook Marketing Article Ageist?

Some thought so.

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A couple months ago I wrote an article titled, Facebook’s Old People Problem That Won’t Die. It is one of my most popular articles. It is also my most controversial. Although I did not intend it to be.

Facebook Has an Old People Problem That Won’t Die

Despite the fact that Facebook was the subject of the article, and the fact its fastest growing age demographic is senior citizens, some readers took personal offense. They read their own personal mortality into the point I made about Facebook’s impending demise.

Some found “old people” pejorative. One person called me a “moron” and “idiot” before Medium took her comment down. And she has thousands of followers on the platform. Another person-also with thousands of followers-said the article amounted to “hate speech”, “encourages violence”, and “dehumanizes old people.”

Others thought I was needlessly separating “old people” from “young people”, even though the article was a business and marketing piece where such separation is the very nature of the profession. Facebook, like other companies, assesses…