In this context it’s because she’s the youngest person to hold the position of FTC Chairperson.

look at her work. Her work is what brought her to the forefront. Automatically assuming being overly ideal just by way of being young is whist at best and dumb at worst.

Experience and maturity matters.

When I was young I too thought I knew all I needed to know. The older I get the more I understand that experience is very important.

What matters more is recognizing the grand variance of human experience, and that while some may take a lifetime to accumulate even a little wisdom, others can possess unusual abilities and perspectives at any age. It's not like this is news, history is full of such young figures.

Completely, but it is still worth mentioning the age. I don't know why people get triggered by it.

It's like saying the 16yo chess champion, or the 18yo self made billionaire

I often think about the old parable about a man walking down a road that comes to a fence. There is another man on the other side. He asks him to open the gate, and the man replies, "I'll open the gate if you can tell me why the fence is here".

Chesterton's fence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

In both cases, young and old seem to believe what is in their self-interest.

My comment was on older-self vs younger-self.

It's not in your "self-interest", the way you mean it, to review your ideas and believes from when you were younger and realize that with your extra experience you see things differently now.

And just to be 100% clear, I am all for having younger people in critical positions and don't try to argue that one is better than the other.

My reply was on how age matters. Don't know why you try to twist it to a generational flame-war.

One has the advantage of having been in both situations.

Read her paper on Amazon.

I'd say in this case it's an indication of her likely familiarity/experience with some of the issues she'll work on in the FTC - particularly "Big Tech" as the article calls out.

Less likely to ask Google how an ad showed up on their kid's iPhone, for example.

Young people are probably better at manipulating phones than their elders, but do they actually have a better understanding of what is happening?

Pointless anecdote, but my friend, who is a well educated non-tech white collar professional in their upper 20s who is very active on tiktok/IG, recently let on that they believed cell phones communicated directly with satellites. I asked them why they thought dead zones existed in the countryside, and they said that was probably because there wasn't a satellite overhead. I asked them why they thought they were called "cellular phones", and after a minute of pondering it must be because the phones are very small.

It isn't totally wrong to surmise that cell phones communicate directly with satellites; Mine is constantly listening to radio streams from satellites and using those to figure out where I am.

I'd say it's pretty wrong considering there are literally satellite phones.

Oh, it's for sure pretty wrong, but I can see how someone would get that impression (especially if they knew satellite phones were a thing but didn't know how uncommon they are).

Some might take her young age to mean she's less likely to have already been bought by the companies they'd like her to reign in.

To the contrary, a young person has a long career ahead of them, and a less scrupulous person could be bribed by the promise of a lifetime cushy job after government.

It really doesn't and who cares. The source of this article is from the BBC and they and every clickbait tabloid media company does it all the time.

What really matters is if she and her assistants can do anything about the Big Tech problem or not. Otherwise it's a huge waste of time and nothing happens.

Because in general it's a very good indicator of idealism vs pragmatism.

Obviously not a be-all, and highly dependent on experience (e.g. are you 32 and spent all your life in academia, or 32 and have 10 years of industry experience, or somewhere in between).

You can also make a myriad of applicable observations based on age, but ultimately it's probably relevant because she is the youngest person in that position ever.