this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
651 points (99.2% liked)

Privacy

39596 readers
267 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Regeneron is to pay $256 million in cash to acquire "substantially all" of 23andMe's assets, including its massive biobank of around 15 million customer genetic samples and data.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 167 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (37 children)

Hindsight is 20/20. ITT lots of folks proud of themselves for not falling into this trap, but try to understand, 23andme was named "invention of the year" by Time in 2008. That's ~~before~~ [edit: around the time] google and facebook had begun monetizing private data. Data privacy, or even the power of data itself, was hardly appreciated by private companies let alone in the public consciousness.

Orphans, people with absent parents, decedents of slaves, the list goes on for folks who would understandably go for an affordable way to access their genetic history. Sure, there were plenty of folks since then who had all the information and still went for it, but what about all those who became aware of it too late and when they requested their data be deleted were told it would be kept for 3 years!

I'm saddened to see more victim blaming here than anger at the ToS/privacy policy fuckery and a complete lack of consumer protection.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Anyone trusting anyone else in a capitalist society is signing up to be the sucker. Has been this way for 200 years.

Historically illiterate populace.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

And you went straight into doing it again! Amazing

load more comments (35 replies)