IMDB has been criticised by Hollywood unions SAG and AFTRA for refusing to allow users to hide their real birthdays.

Unions and actors have argued that because IMDB publishes real ages, it facilitates age discrimination, making it harder for older actors to get parts. Unions have also said that IMDB publishes dates of birth without actors consent and users should be allowed to remove their date of birth if they choose.

IMDB has become the world’s largest movie website, and is widely used in the film industry by professional actors and casting directors. It does seem a little strange that people wishing to remove their age from their profile are not allowed to. How hard would it be for IMDB to allow users to hide their age and select a playing age range instead? IMDB Pro, the paying subscription service is after all targeted towards people working in the film industry, and to have this negative feedback from two major unions proves that there could be room for improvement.

However, on the other side of the argument, websites like Wikipedia show dates of birth on user profiles, so should other sites be forced to hide ages too? This also crosses over on the idea of ‘transparency’. How much or how little information should really be visible on public profiles? What do you think