Twenty-seven states and DC sue 23andMe to oppose the sale of DNA data from its customers without their direct consent
Attorney General James Sues 23andMe to Protect New Yorkers’ Genetic Data
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I’m so glad I never got around to doing one of these tests
One of my family members moved to the US and did it. Really pissed me off that they'd do that but I guess it's the thing to do there?? They've since moved back to AU but got to leave a little bit of themselves (and by genetics, me) behind to be sold to the highest bidder <3
Thanks heaps for that.
It's ... not "the thing to do" here.
Ancestry stuff has been pretty popular in the US for decades, DNA testing for it is relatively new but just the next easy step.
ancestry is probably the one that datamined the most, and they do share it with LEO more freely than 23 and me.
If its not, then why is it so popular there?
Everyone's so keen to be 12% Irish so they can claim they enjoy beer because of their proud Irish heritage, or have 0.5% native american so they can claim a tribe and get tattoos that are deeply spiritual (now), or that 8% Italian which explains why they love pizza. For a country that's so publicly proud - what with the flags and all - everyone's certainly keen to find any excuse to pretend to be from somewhere else.
I know literally one Australian who's done it, and they only did it after living in the US for a couple of years.
then why is it so popular there
Because like many countries whose inhabitants come from a variety of places, you've got lots of people interested in their "heritage"
Since most people in the US can't say their family has been here longer than a couple hundred years, and depending on the area no more than 100 or so, a lot of people wish to know "where they came from" so to speak. DNA testing is just easier than tracing a family tree.
I happen to be lucky enough to have a family member obsessed with genealogy, who traced down the last 1,000 or so years depending on which parts of the family and what areas they're from, so I don't need genetic testing to know 99% of my family is white as fuck with a couple POC from different continents and a native back in the 1700s. I don't feel any particular draw to any culture, nor do I feel like donning traditional garb or participating in holidays, ceremonies, rituals, or customs. Some people do.
I totally get it if it's not your thing, especially since that kind of mentality of "ooh let's find out where our families came from" isn't present in most other places in the world, and definitely not to the same degree even in other colonial areas. Personally I think it's part of that whole "melting pot" ideology, but I'm just some rando on the internet.
Honestly even without my relative tracing the family tree, I would never have paid to give my DNA to a company for results with questionable accuracy. Shits weird, yo.
Did any family members though? Particularly close members since that ends up giving a ton of yours as well :\
I know a first cousin of mine did. :( Over 15million people used it.
The only silver lining is that they've been bought by a research company instead of an insurance company. I don't know if theres a legal leg to stand on per the data. They almost 100% agreed to give up ownership to the company, that's the only way it could do any of the genetic relationship analysis that it did.
2 of my cousins and my sister did.
Unfortunate how less people think of privacy these days.
