Crowdsourced DNA Project Says It Will Shut Down to Protect Users from Rising Authoritarianism

An open-source genetic information repository that has subsisted on crowdsourced contributions will shut down next month, partially to protect its user base from the threat of rising authoritarianism, its founder has announced. OpenSNP was originally launched 14 years ago and was designed to allow web users to publish the results of their consumer DNA tests (of the kind you might get from 23andMe). Users can post their own genetic information from commercial consumer tests, and the information can then be used for a variety of purposes, including the betterment of scientific research. On its site, OpenSNP notes that users can “publish their test results, find others with similar genetic variations, learn more about their results by getting the latest primary literature on their variations, and help scientists find new associations.” Now, that’s all coming to an end. The founder of the project, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, wrote on his personal blog on Monday that the project will be sh ... Read full article.