Genetic Access Control Code Uses 23andMe DNA Data For Internet Racism

rjmarvin writes: A GitHub project is using the 23andMe API for genetic decoding to act as a way to bar users from entering websites based on their genetic data — race and ancestry. "Stumbling around GitHub, I came across this bit of code: Genetic Access Control. Now, budding young racist coders can check out your 23andMe page before they allow you into their website! Seriously, this code uses the 23andMe API to pull genetic info, then runs access control on the user based on the results. Just why you decide not to let someone into your site is up to you, but it can be based on any aspect of the 23andMe API. This is literally the code to automate racism."

Comments

A self limiting problem

[Michael Woodhams]

So visitors to his website:
* Must have been sequenced by 23andMe
* And be so interested in his website that they are willing to give him access to their genetic data
* And meet whatever genetic filter he has imposed.

At this point, what he is running is less of a 'website', more of a 'diary', as it will have only one reader.

Re:If race doesn't exist, how is this possible?

[larwe]

If everyone was a single homogeneous skin color, the exact same discriminations would be occurring on the basis of eye color, or eyelash color, or penis length. It just happens to be a big, easy to read signal differentiating "us" from "not us". (Actually I think the answer to "why skin color" has a lot to do with the fact that white races were isolated from black races for a long time after they, y'know, evolved from an originally black common ancestor, and when they did meet black people again it was in a conqueror/enslaver vs conquered/enslaved context).