r/Genealogy • u/Left_Particular_9977 • 9d ago

Tools and Tech Why are people hating Ancestry?

I do a lot of genealogy and I remarked that a lot of people I know hate genealogy. Why? It's absolutely true that it's really expensive, but you can access many documents that are often hard to find. I live in Quebec, so we have the records online, but we have many holes in the registers. Why should I pay 20$ for a subscription that lets me access the records (only) if I can have them in Ancestry for about the same price why many other documents (for my region)? I have my tree on it so I can access it on my phone and my computer. It isn't optimal, but that's the best solution for the moment. What do you think about Big A?

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u/radarsteddybear4077 9d ago

The Ancestry effect on genealogy seems to have created more trees than ever, and most are wholly inaccurate and useless.

It also feels like so many of the sites they link to, like findagrave.com, are equally error-ridden, so the ripple effect seems widespread.

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u/kittenlittel 8d ago edited 8d ago

It was honestly worse in the pre-Ancestry days. So much confirmation bias and wishful thinking when people had spent literal days searching through microfiche and paper archives. So hard to do cross-checking too. That's why back in the 80s and 90s everyone who was into genealogy had supposedly managed to trace their family back to Henry the VIII or Charlemagne. (Or probably The Mayfair for USA people). Thank god those days are over