In recent years, swathes of Britain's public records have been bought up by multinational companies – allowing them to charge for access and make a profit from your family history.
  • kristina [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    legit paid to figure out that some of my family were forcible relocated and stripped of their culture by the nazis haha :yea:

    cant say it was traumatizing or anything for me.... more just extremely surreal. turns out the nazis stole a fuckton of babies

  • OgdenTO [he/him]
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    2 years ago

    This has happened in Canada. Free access to many old government records are now through subscription only.

    As far as I can tell, this was done because there are "too many" public records for the government to handle digitising and archiving, so they pay huge contracts to like ancestry to do it, and then ancestry holds them behind a paywall.

    This is also happening with lots of recent public land records.

  • Nama [he/him]
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    2 years ago

    Ya know what this reminds me off? Ancestor-simulation theory.

    I mean I'd ask myself how humanity allowed all the shit to happen, especially climate change, but also just this. At what point do people not take the bullshit anymore? Never?

  • pastalicious [he/him, undecided]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Something has to pay for the public services we've deliberately defunded... and it could be the money we make from selling your records... but also it won't be. And also we could've afforded the services all along. So many dilemmas that only we can solve!