Why I regret using 23andMe: I gave up my DNA just to find out I’m British | Technology | The Guardian

Americans seem get really weird with the whole ancestry thing. There appears to be a desire to look into your family history and find something "exotic", which basically seems to mean non-English - I imagine because that's perceived as the 'default' ancestry, so-to-speak.

Honestly, who the fuck cares? What difference does it make? Nationalities aren't Skyrim races. You don't get special abilities. It makes no difference whether your ancestors were British/Irish/Spanish/French/whatever.

E: This is obviously not intended as a hateful statement, people. You have to understand that the rest of the world doesn't care about this, so we're confused when we look to the US and see them take it so seriously. We're especially puzzled when Americans say "I'm Irish" because their great great great uncle bought a pint of Guiness in the 1870s. It's an alien concept to the rest of the planet.

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.

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 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.

There's something hilarious about the author's disappointment to find out they're British, and nothing else.

Can't say I blame them though.

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.

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.

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 🇺🇸

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.

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.

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.

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.

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"

This only tells you about your very recent ancestry, but go back enough generations are you are descended from everyone alive at the time who still has living decendants, just like everyone else.

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.

Told you so.

they've mostly got your genetics anyways if your brother did it

Dare I say it?

Man did you look in the mirror? 😂

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'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 spyware consumer 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.

This made me laugh. Oops.

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