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There's a similar phenomenon on "Find-A-Grave" (https://www.findagrave.com https://www.findagrave.com) which was a quiet old-school genealogy site used by famil
by ilamont 3y ago
There's a similar phenomenon on "Find-A-Grave" (https://www.findagrave.com https://www.findagrave.com) which was a quiet old-school genealogy site used by family historians and researchers until private equity took it over via Ancestry.com.
The current PE owner, Blackstone, installed an ex-Facebook exec as CEO of Ancestry/Find A Grave who instituted a gamification system. Thanks to this engagement tweak, many deaths from accidents to natural causes are quickly "claimed" by random people. Quoting genetic genealogist Roberta Estes:
The problem is that finding your loved one’s memorial, often with incorrect information, created by a stranger is unexpectedly jarring, at best. Especially to discover that your family member was only a trophy harvest whose memorial was created hours after they died. Then, having to ask (sometimes beg an unresponsive person) for the transfer of their memorial to you, only to have the creator’s name forever associated with the memorial adds insult to injury.
https://dna-explained.com/2022/06/02/find-a-grave-owned-by-ancestry-seriously-just-stop-incentivizing-the-creation-of-memorials-of-the-recently-deceased/ https://dna-explained.com/2022/06/02/find-a-grave-owned-by-a...
What's particularly disturbing are the "memorials" created by strangers to victims of major accidents, mass shootings, and other tragedies:
Even with the photo and some information hidden, for now, the Uvalde victims’ memorials are still listed. The one above is the same child’s memorial as in Judy’s article.
Even after eventually transferring the memorial to a family member, the original creator is always still listed. Unfortunately, this practice of awarding points and forever listing the “creator” by Ancestry encourages and incentivizes “trophy hunting.”
Family members and genealogists have been infuriated by the Find-A-Grave situation, but Ancestry's management team has basically shrugged and said "tough luck."
- bombcar 3y agoit would be so simple for them to gamify the actual thing they want, by just restricting it to graves that are at least X years old. But they don't want to fix it.
- cush 3y agoAfter a decade of declining search result quality, you'd think Google would have made some headway at busting through this kind of blatant SEO highjacking. It's interesting what kind of scummy markets emerge when there's no rules, no barrier to entry, and the only thing you need to earn a profit is to get views.
- Aeolun 3y agoI think we can assume that if google had wanted to, they could have. I barely see this crap on Kagi after all.
- ipaddr 3y agoI barely see anything on kagi their search results are as thin as a default searx instance
- DistractionRect 3y agoMy take on that is it's simply more profitable to ignore it. Having to click through multiple results to find the information you want is more ad impressions than having answered your question in the first or second result.
- samtho 3y agoI do some genealogy on the side and Find a Grave has been really helpful - but to only those who have died long ago. They really needed to make a system where the recently departed are off limits to everyone except confirmed, direct family members for the first few years proceeding the individual’s passing.
- Scoundreller 3y agoGo with familysearch.org, it's run by Church of Latter Day Saints/LDS, so I don't think they'll be selling it off anytime soon. Some external links (including to findagrave), but lots of info they store locally. They seem to have a ton of my ancestors imported from national archives on microfiche from a predecessor country of a predecessor occupier of a former yugoslav republic. And somehow an uncle's US naturalization certificate...
- jurynulifcation 3y agooh man, of all the malicious entities on earth I care to not have my data or know which deaths in the family I need info on, the LDS is probably near the top. Best thing is it might be tractable to keep my data out of the cult. Thanks for the warning!
- multjoy 3y agoThey are spending a huge amount of money digitising archives around the world for their genealogy projects, and were involved in the early use of microfiche in England back in the fifties. https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_102866_smxx.pdf https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_102866_smxx.pdf
- Scoundreller 3y agomeh, I'd trust them more than blackrock
- Tao3300 3y agoGood luck. LDS is pretty serious about this stuff. They probably know more about you than you do.
- jurynulifcation 3y agoman, fuck. I hate when moneyed and powerful cults take an interest beyond their own purview. Can we just give them Utah and quarantine them there?
- 3y ago
- r2_pilot 3y ago>Family members and genealogists have been infuriated by the Find-A-Grave situation, but Ancestry's management team has basically shrugged and said "tough luck." My solution to this is to not get worked up over digital lies about the dead. I know what happened to those I care about, and that's enough. And even if I didn't know, it's in the past so it's as inaccessible to me as Cygnus A*.