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surprised-pika-messed-up Who would've thought giving a private company your DNA data would be bad

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[-] GaveUp@hexbear.net 14 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Fuck, I just wanted to find out what my racial makeup was so I can feel like a sexy exotic mix /s

[-] LaGG_3@hexbear.net 7 points 9 hours ago

I remember hearing that if you're Black or Asian, they don't even give you any specific details lmao

[-] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 3 points 1 hour ago

It's how they get the results. They can only pinpoint specifics when more people of that ethnicity submit their DNA. Since a bunch of people in Asia and Africa don't give a shit about this stuff, they aren't submitting samples to build data off of. Your average Japanese person living in Japan, for example, maybe has some Korean, Filipino, or Chinese ancestry from a few generations back. But a lot of families have written records going back hundreds of years, so why would they want to pay for a test telling them something they already know?

There's a lot of Arab cultures like that, too, where they keep extensive records (orally or written) to the point they don't need DNA tests. I'm sure there's other places like that as well I'm just not familiar with.

It's really more of a western hemisphere thing where immigrants pretended to be from places they weren't or minorities lied about their ethnicities to avoid discrimination. Often you had Irish and Italians trying to pass off as French or English when coming through Ellis Island. Or people who were part black saying they were Native American or Greek so they could get into whites-only spaces.

[-] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 5 points 8 hours ago

"Says here you are 2.7% Scottish, 19% French-Burgundian, 4% from a tiny fishing village in Italy that hasn't had a name since Rome fell, 1/264th Cherokee, 15mm Transylvanian, 2 cubits Bohemian, and the rest is uhhh.." gestures vaguely toward Africa and Asia "China, I guess."

[-] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 38 points 19 hours ago

Honestly wouldn't surprise me at this point if the whole thing was a psyop to create a database of future undesirables.

[-] LaGG_3@hexbear.net 39 points 18 hours ago

Conspiracy aside, this will 100% be used to do this in a soft-fascist neoliberal "oh, it's potentially too expensive to care for these people" way.

I would not be surprised if this data ends up being used in background checks or some distopian shit to keep people from getting jobs or whatever.

[-] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 7 points 8 hours ago

And just like last time IBM will be standing by to process the data.

[-] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 14 points 15 hours ago

We're already seeing talks of eliminating preexisting conditions. Insurance companies would be stupid not to buy consumer data to look for things. The GOP have been wanting to gut Obamacare since day one, which means democrats are going to outflank Trump by eliminating preexisting conditions because "Think of our poor, little insurance mom and pop small businesses!"

[-] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 15 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

May even be some GATTACA style eugenics shit where people are denied jobs because of pre-existing genetic medical condition tendencies. It may be technically illegal even then, but that won't stop corpos from mysteriously not hiring those people.

JUST LIKE IN THE TREATS! so-true

[-] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 11 points 15 hours ago

Unlike in the treats tho I won't be able to sneak aboard a space shuttle so as always reality is worse than the dystopian fiction could have predicted.

[-] LaGG_3@hexbear.net 40 points 20 hours ago

no-i-in-pezza Both of my estranged boomer parents did this, and 23andMe pretty much have my shit without my consent. Super cool!

[-] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 1 points 3 hours ago

They don't know which allele is which though, they don't automatically know what combination would be you.

They could only confirm that you're related to your parents.

[-] Justice@lemmygrad.ml 21 points 17 hours ago

They have every American's shit. Most Europeans too. Spoiler, if your uncle and your random ass 3rd cousin got tests done, then you also basically got a test done. They don't need every single detail to draw a rough "good enough" circle around like "people with these genes in their family aren't worth the cost."

[-] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 16 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Both of my estranged boomer parents did this, and 23andMe pretty much have my shit without my consent. Super cool!

Mine too, the fucking fascist chuds. All they found out is that they had multiple intertwined justifications for nazis to murder their ancestral relatives and they were still believed Hitler should have won WW2.

[-] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 9 points 13 hours ago

Glad you got away from them, comrade!

[-] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 2 points 5 hours ago

I am, too. Wasn't easy, took years to prepare, and some sacrifices.

[-] AernaLingus@hexbear.net 14 points 17 hours ago

In my case, my sister and my dad, but yeah. Truly amazing results: they have genetic compositions you would expect from any random person with their ethnic backgrounds! This information was definitely worth eroding the privacy of our entire family tree.

[-] buh@hexbear.net 13 points 17 hours ago

My sister did that shit and the only information it gave was our parents’ home country, which we already know because they’re first gen immigrants

this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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