Mildly Infuriating @lemmy.world 🦥󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠 @lemmy.world 1y ago

My ancestry.com experience in a nutshell

I don't know if I'm just doing something wrong but I built my family tree and the website seems to have barely any information about my family at all. I found out more just checking out our national archives then what I found on this website. It's maybe worth noting that I'm not in the US and it does appear to be somewhat US-centric.

The best it could find was a couple of enrollment records for voting and a single immigrant notification in an old newspaper. It didn't find these either by itself, I had to manually go though the search system to find it. The OCR didn't even get the spelling of the name correct.

I'm not sure what I expected but it was definitely better than this, especially for all the pay walls they throw up.

63 comments

You just have to keep giving them more and more private information about yourself and your unwitting family, then something magic happens.
- And money by the looks.
  
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- And then cops use the data to track down DNA evidence in 40 year old cases
  
  Well perhaps you should have refrained from killing those prostitutes 40 years ago‽
its just another way they collect data and track people.
Definitely US-centric. You have to pay extra to get records from some countries. Works very well for people in the US
- Permanently Deleted
  
  Source?
  
  Edit: okay, he downvoted me and the diverted the conversation. I just wanted a source, which he seems unable to provide. Just want this to serve as a reminder to people that you shouldn’t trust everything you read online, even in Lemmy comments
  
  Interestingly, I did find links to the Singapore govt, through GIC
Clearly, you aren't a super white American. My family tree got filled up easily up until the 1600s because I have a bunch of family members with nothing better to do than catalog our family tree. Apparently one half of my family came from Scotland in the 16th century so I can claim that I'm Scottish-American now.
- Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
  
  Source: actual Scot
  
  Username checks out.
  
  I think its so funny hearing people are American (whatever country their grandpappy came from) 😂
I've been paying $25 a month to run into relatives that all have their trees set to PRIVATE.

They're my cousins / second-cousins, and I'm not sure who their parents are or how they fit into my tree.

The site lets you look at US Census data... from the 1950s or some shit. So I can piece together family information upwards half a dozen ways to my grandparents and their parents and so on, but I can't seem to get any info from the system for anyone born after the 1950s.

I keep paying because I'm trying to solve a spooky family mystery.
- That spooky family mystery is exactly why their family trees are all set to private.
- spooky family mystery
  
  story time! :D
  
  Their grandpa married a ghost. They're 1/4 ghost.
  
  Scooby Doo & The Gang in: WHO KILLED MEEMAW?!
- I was a spooky family mystery. There are records out there, particularly for the US, but you have think laterally and use resources outside their walled garden. US census records are only released after (IIRC) 70 years, so getting the 1950 census was a pretty big development. Beyond that, there are obituaries, phone books, newspapers, yearbooks, and others. I can even say from experience that the creepy "Radaris" style sites are usually leveraging some kernels of valid information in the free teaser data they show.
I thought if I put my name and my parents and grandparents in, it would help me build a tree. Then it was so who are your great grandparents? Bitch that's why I'm here!?
- Yeah exactly. I would have thought by the time I gave it a parents name or two that would be enough, but no.
- How did you do your username like that? Is it just emojis?
  
  Step 1: have an unrequited desire to be the center of attention
  
  Step 2: emoji
  
  It's a fancy text generator off Google. I'm not certain it is emojis, then you can change your display name on he website.
Most of these services are US-centric because a lot of the necessary records to provide the information isn’t public in many countries outside of the US.

Birth records, death records, marriage records, divorce records, voting records, criminal records, etc. is considered public information in much of the US. Even address information can be found publicly and immigration records become available to the public after a certain time.

In a lot of countries, especially in many European countries, these are hard to access for people that aren’t the subject of these records, if accessible at all.

For example while court records are public in much of Europe, often times the names of private persons are censored because it’s not deemed necessary to know who the parties are to be able to check if the courts make fair decisions.
This automatically excludes criminal and divorce information from disseminating into the public.

Some countries will make some records public once the subject of those records have passed for X amount of years, but that’s still pretty rare.

As such services like these have limited use outside the United States.
I built my family tree and thought - oh neat, even more ancestors to disappoint.
I use familysearch.org. It’s free! I’m not sure what country you’re in, but I’ve found a lot of info on European, Italian, and some African ancestors through there.
- “It’s free!” Is alarming and inappropriately cheerful.
  
  These sites are sociopathic data harvesters, and if your relatives have any sense they’ll give you shit for exposing them to it as well. If it’s free, it’s probably even worse.
  
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- It looks like this is sponsored by the Mormon Church. They haven’t spammed you have they?
  
  They own all of them. They have a large stake in Ancestry too. Also, the Mormon church has investment funds that own a ton of things. It was a big deal recently because they lied to the SEC to hide the size of it from their members.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensign_Peak_Advisors
  
  Would you give 10% of your income to someone who has $124 billion already?
  
  Wow. my app cut off this comment so editing:
  
  Nope! They send occasional emails when they find new records or a past relative’s birthday, but I have not received any spammy ones from the Mormons or asked to join their cult.
It’s a group effort so if nobody in your country uses it then it’s going to be a lot less helpful to you.

I don’t know how it gets started in an area because presumably everyone else you know would get the same experience as you when they sign in so how does it encourage people to start building the knowledge base up?

I know that it works in the UK. My wife has used it and found a lot of useful info but had to add her own info too.
Least you had a free trial so that's something
I'm on 23 and me and some of my long lost cousins from the south keep trying to hook up with me.
- I mean, I guess that's a complement in a way at least.

63 comments