I haven’t found an article yet that can actually articulate the problem with 23 and me right now, and actually did research into it or even read the terms and service. The problem with 23 and me is that they are not maximizing the share holder value of the data they are sitting on. The CEO wants to keep the company in line with the principals they were founded on which is to protect the privacy and data of their customers, while using opt in studies to build data sets that can be studied or sold.
Investors want to enshittify the company, and have been organizing a campaign against to company to try to drive it into liquidation to buy the data, even though the company is profitable. I wouldn’t be surprised is they are funding these weekly omfg 23 and me bad articles.
That juicy data is going to get bought up by the health insurance industry. I would be surprised if they aren’t part of the push to force them to sell the data.
I am a technology journalist – I like to think I am thoughtful about what data I share with corporations.
My brother in Christ, if you are a tech journalist then you, out of all people, should know not to give ANY data to corporations. That is a massive fuckup regarding your job.
Oh, don’t worry. If you hadn’t given it to them, one or ten of your fucking rellies did anyway and had no clue of the implications either.
I want to upvote this, but … Why did you have to shorten “relatives”?
I like it
I had in some ways the opposite 23&Me experience and goals. My parents told me growing up that I had some small native ancestry. This is actually a common myth many Americans have either been told or somehow deluded themselves into believing.
So I did the DNA testing (which I now regret from all the obvious enshittification and privacy reasons) to prove that my ancestry was boring and predictable. Which it was, no indigenous ancestry, just the expected European countries that my great grandparents came from.
They also do a lot of nice health screening things and I think that’s probably the much more valuable aspect of it. It really is very American that people are so much more concerned with what DNA says about one’s race or ethnicity than about their health and wellbeing.
I’m worried about insurance companies getting it and changing rates/services based on my DNA.
Took me too long to realise that article is actually serious. I’d have sworn white people with huge ethnics fetish would show up as “Austrian painter” on their test, but I guess British works. Oh well 🇺🇸
You made me smile.
Recreational DNA testing eventually led to discovering that I had never before met my biological father. Mom got it wrong. I met him and his family this summer finally. I am slightly irritated that my last name (and my child’s) is now kind of meaningless, and it’s too much of a hassle to change it.
Paternity testing should be done for every child. The child and father should have the same certainty that mothers have.
Even with my experience as a presumed father, and as a falsely-surnamed child, I disagree.
It’s okay to disagree. But many who would line to know can object only when it’s already too late.
The only thing I can imagine working is for a birth certificate when listing father, would have a selection of “presumed” or “verified”, where verified would have a doctor sign off. It should be optional. But it would be nice if a paternity test was presented as an option automatically, without needing suspicion or accusation.
That default to suspicion/accusation is why fathers don’t have real rights in this matter.
As it only requires saliva, any father can test their child’s DNA. Babies drool a lot. It may cost a few hundred dollars to do so. I suppose that makes it even less trusting to do it in secret than just having it as standard medical procedure.
Completely agree.
I mean there so many videos like this https://youtube.com/shorts/FgzbCJYCBr8 that dude is devastated. Or this ‘classic’ https://youtube.com/shorts/qj0zsL68Ka8 or this or guy https://youtube.com/shorts/j3PWef89kPw
I could keep going, it’s not that hard videos like that’s and I wish it was.
Just for a pallet cleanser, look how happy this do is to find out that he is the father. https://youtube.com/shorts/PfRR5iKE70Q
I refuse to do it because I’m a twin. We both agree that it’s shitty if one of us does it because then the other is forced into it basically, being identical.
Also our dad was a piece of cheating shit so we don’t ever want to know about that possibility.
I mean obviously it would just discover that your mom was also a cheater?
Well I mean beyond the possibility of half siblings.
That would indicate your mom cheated as well? Not sure exactly what your dad cheating has to do with your DNA. Wouldn’t it be better to find out he wasn’t your dad if he was so shitty?
We do not want to find my father’s illegitimate children. He was our father, as our mother never cheated.
I’m very sorry I didn’t think of this context. I wasn’t being daft intentionally, it just didn’t occur to me when I was trying to figure out the situation
I can understand now. Thank you for sharing and gently explaining the situation
(I’m also very, very sorry to have implied your mother had cheated in that scenario. I did not mean to cast shade on her character)
You are much more polite than the person who was much more condescending about my mother. It’s fine.
I know for facts my mother never cheated. Mother is at an age I have increasing access to medical records of previous…attempts at children. Which lines up entirely with things my father talked about, and how delighted they were when we were born. Also, my father, for his faults, absolutely could spot another cheater at 50 paces and knew my mother did not.
Also she was like. The only person at home, working in education with long hours and then taking care of us, so if she did cheat, like. Damn, she was really finding the time somehow taking care of terrible twins.
Fair.
our mother never cheated.
That you know of, or care to know of. To be fair that’s a better reason to not do it. You know your dad is a piece of shit apparently, your mom you have a good image of, and no benefit to the image being tarnished after it matters.
That you know of, or care to know of.
Yes, but also who cares. No need to point out that “technically there’s always a chance” because you can do that for basically anything.
They don’t want to find other siblings
Thank you; I’m sorry I missed that broader context. I try to think critically about what I read and sometimes I struggle with widening my scope of thinking
It’s this. We do not want to find his other children.
But what if they’re totally cool people who own a bar in Tahoe or something? You’d be missing out on the fun.
Yeah, but what if they’re right wing weirdos obsessed with genealogy and they reach out to you first because they want to save you or something?
But what if it’s Bill Gates and he’s been trying to find his lost sibling for inheritance purposes?
¿Porque no los dos?
How does that work? The lab puts you in contact with people they know share your DNA?
If you choose to opt in and participate in DNA Relatives, other customers that have also elected to participate in this feature will be able to view the following information about you:
Your DNA Relatives display name
How recently you logged into your account
Your relationship labels (masculine, feminine, neutral)
Your predicted relationship and percentage of DNA shared with your matches
Your location (optional)
Ancestor birth locations and family names (optional)
Your profile picture (optional)
Your birth year (optional)
A link to your Family Tree (optional)
Anything you have added to the “Introduce yourself!” Section (optional)
Much better than Tinder for solid matches in my experience.
I think of myself as someone who always wants to know, I want to know the truth, I don’t like not knowing things. Plus, it could help finding out about genetic conditions and things to be on the lookout for, which can definitely be valuable.
I’d still never do one of these tests because of the privacy concerns and because I don’t trust companies with something like this, especially since I have seen so many times where companies have a lax attitude or lax policies or both about security.
Yeah companies don’t care. McDonald’s sold my fingerprint data. I used it to clock in and out for work. I got like a 50 dollar settlement or something so that was nice <3 ty Ronald
Why do you rich people always get off flaunting your wealth in our faces?
So sorry. I’m sure with lots of hard work, nepotism and education you too may some day be able to work at a McDonald’s of your own and get your prints stolen. Keep that head up champ and pull up hard on those boot straps! :)
On this topic, I did ancestrydna long before I got concerned with my data and privacy. I have since deleted my data and had them destroy my physical sample as well (which took them a long time). But I wonder if the damage is done and even though they say they deleted and destroyed the sample how can I know for sure? Etc
I don’t know James Smith, from Phoenix, Arizona. Social security number 523-098-1322. Is your data safe?
Imagine how you’d freak out if I, by change, got it right.
What the hell?! You got mine right!
Not really, but it would have been cool. Also, socials are 9 digits in the US.
Maybe if I swab my mouth and send it off to a company, I’ll finally be interesting and people will like me.
puts letter down
…maybe not.
I still find it funny people think these tests mean anything. “you have these 7/9 genes in common with Jasper Brittania and are therefore 77% british”
I’m honestly not interested in 23andMe so I never bothered to fact-check so take this with a massive grain of salt but I did watch Linus (from TechTips, not Linux) rant about the privacy problems it has. I don’t trust him about these things but I’ve also watched him rant in favor of letting the
spywareconsumer features of Windows stay on because they’re so great and it’s not that big of a deal, so 23andMe has to be doing something very, very wrong.I did it over 15 years ago, but for health information before the FDA nuked that. (Although you can still run the raw data through a third party program)
I’m pretty sure I already uploaded myself to at least one open source database, so I don’t see any reason to worry that much.
Like honestly, I’d rather be open sourced than sold as proprietary data haha
In either case the actors to worry about (whatever they might be) gets access, in the latter case it might additionally do some good.
The problem is when your data can be connected to you. If you just share it anonymously, it will likely help nobody, except that everyone now knows that some person in the world has this DNA. And has money to get it sequenced.
I’ve got to admit, I’ve wanted to do one of those tests just because my family is such a mix of “lol we don’t know.” Like, no really, what IS my maternal grandma? She does not look like the rest of her family and had a different family name from her siblings. And ok really, where DID my paternal great-grandmother who lied about her race so she could marry my great-grandfather back when “miscegenation” was illegal, come from? And WAS that great-grandpa biracial himself?
There’s a reason I call myself an ethnic Rorschach test, and I’d love to know why it is I am. But the rest of my family is against the idea of finding out because “it doesn’t matter” plus who knows how just data might be used one day.
the test isnt particularly meaningful. As I understand it they just test a handful of genes that they suspect were less varied in the past. As a result if you get tested through all the services that offer gene testing you will get different numbers for each one.
That’s the other big reason I’m hesitant - different tests can give totally different results, so who knows what’s “right”?
You can just do the test in secret, I guess. Just don’t tell anyone. But yeah, costs money of course.
Honestly I’ve never gotten the desire to do one of these things. You give away arguably the most uniquely valuable and private part of yourself to this company (or companies like it) to do god knows what with in exchange for these results that are (IMO) ultimately just unnecessary trivia about yourself.
Told you so.
