Ancestry paywalled Shared Matches and ThruLines — features that were free when millions bought DNA kits

In February 2024, Ancestry moved Shared Matches and ThruLines behind a new subscription tier called AncestryDNA Plus. If you bought a $99 AncestryDNA kit before this change, you could see which of your DNA matches also match each other — a core technique for triangulating unknown relatives. Now, without an additional subscription, you can only see 3 shared matches and no family trees. A Change.org petition demanding the reversal has gathered tens of thousands of signatures. This matters because shared matches are the single most important tool for adoptees, donor-conceived people, and anyone trying to identify unknown biological relatives. Without shared matches, a person staring at a list of 2,000 DNA matches has no way to cluster them into family groups. They cannot distinguish maternal from paternal matches. They cannot figure out which branch of a family tree a mystery match falls on. The DNA kit itself is useless for identification without this feature — it is like selling someone a car and then charging a monthly fee to use the steering wheel. The reason this problem persists is structural: Ancestry holds the largest consumer DNA database in the world (over 25 million kits sold), which creates a network effect that makes it nearly impossible for competitors to offer equivalent matching power. Users cannot transfer their raw DNA data to another platform and get the same quality of shared matches because the matches themselves are other Ancestry customers. This monopoly position lets Ancestry extract additional subscription revenue from users who have no viable alternative. The DNA kit was a one-time purchase that created permanent dependency on Ancestry's platform, and now Ancestry is monetizing that dependency.