If 23 and Me goes bankrupt, they will sell all of the biometric data they’ve collected over decades to the highest bidder. Why can’t the US government step in to purchase the company and establish a public trust?

  • zephorah@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    How accurate is that data? I have a relative who received different results from their family tree than expected. So they sent it in again. Different results. Annoyed, they sent on yet another test. Again, different results. Not slight either, entire additions and subtractions.

    • SkaveRat
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      1 month ago

      very accurate in my case.

      You really need to be careful when taking the samples. No eating, drinking and especially no kissing etc for a couple hours (at least 1h iirc)

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Probably works better if you are Caucasian with a long line of ancestors from Europe.

        I’m indigenous in Canada and I find that these tests don’t seem to work too well for minorities or indigenous groups that don’t have a lot of recorded history or a large percentage of individuals of the same ethnic background who take the same tests.

        Mine said indigenous which I already know … it just didn’t specify who what where or region other than North America.

        • SkaveRat
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          1 month ago

          yeah, in the end they more or less rely on public available information and their userbase to calculate the heritage. If there’s not enough information available, they will not be able to do much.

          23andme had a huge user base in the US, and a big one in europe. But outside of that, their historic data gets very broad

        • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Probably took a page out of the government of Canada’s books and said " ehh close enough, they all look the same*

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      They are rife with differences. They have improved over time, but they generally don’t really identify specific ancestry. Rather, they use statistical patterns to correlate self-reported ancestry.