If you’ve arrived here looking for one of my genealogy posts, you’ve probably noticed it’s no longer available. I wanted to take a moment to explain why I made this decision.
The Landscape Has Changed
When I started writing about my DNA and family tree journey, I was writing for other genealogy enthusiasts. People curious about the research process, the surprises DNA testing reveals, the stories behind the names. I was sharing with humans in mind.
The internet has changed significantly. AI can now efficiently aggregate and cross-reference publicly available information at scale. What once felt like sharing stories with interested readers has become something different. The data I shared, names, relationships, locations, dates, can now be systematically compiled in ways that weren’t practically possible when I first started writing.
The Irony of Closed Data
Here’s what bothers me most: companies like Ancestry have massive amounts of genealogical data through DNA matches and family trees. They could help everyone build more accurate family trees by sharing insights across their database. Ancestry once mentioned they might organize DNA matches by grandparent lineage. Imagine how revolutionary that would be for researchers. They didn’t do it. I suspect it’s because making genealogy too easy would undermine their business model.
So we’re in this strange situation where individual researchers share information publicly, hoping to help others. That information gets harvested and compiled by various entities. The organizations with the most comprehensive data keep it locked away. The average person still struggles to find accurate information about their own family.
It feels like a one-way street.
Connecting the Dots Is Too Easy Now
I didn’t write about living people in my research. Here’s the thing: if I wrote about my deceased great-grandparents, AI can easily figure out the lineage because of the volume of information shared publicly. People mention family on social media. They post photos with captions. They share obituaries. Birth records are online. Census data is digitized. Marriage certificates are searchable.
One person sharing one piece of the puzzle wasn’t a big deal before. Now? AI can take what I shared about my great-grandparents, cross-reference it with what someone else shared on a different platform, pull in public records, and piece together a surprisingly complete picture. It can work forward through generations or backward through time. The dots connect themselves now.
I’m comfortable with that. Even though everything I shared was about people who passed away decades ago, the implications reach forward. It reaches people who are alive now. That wasn’t what I signed up for.
What This Means
I haven’t abandoned genealogy research. I still find it fascinating. I’m being more selective about what I share publicly. If you’re working on related family lines and think we might be able to help each other, feel free to reach out directly.
I know removing content doesn’t erase it from web archives or cached versions. But it reduces ongoing exposure and discoverability. Sometimes that’s the best we can do.
Moving Forward
If you’re also sharing genealogy information publicly, I’d encourage you to periodically reassess what you’re comfortable having out there. The reasons we started sharing may not align with how that information is being used today. It’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to adapt as the digital landscape evolves.
Thanks for understanding.
