Only the 8.0 cM cutoff is a recent change. The bit about the shared
matches was never announced because it is how AncestryDNA has /always/
worked, at least since I tested.

Your /main match list/ (the screen you are brought to when you click
"DNA matches", which shows all of your matches) showed, and continues to
show, all matches: everyone from "close family", "2nd-3rd cousins,"
"4th-6th cousins" (3500+ cM down to 20.0 cM) to "Distant Cousins" aka
"5th-8th cousins" (20.0 cM down to 8.0 cM). The change that AncestryDNA
made in August is that the cutoff used to go down to 6 cM, and they took
out all matches between 6.0 and 8.0 cM.

The /shared matches tab/ is what you're brought to when you click on the
profile of one of your matches, and are trying to triangulate the
results and see /other /people who match /both/ you and that match. This
section has /always/ had a cutoff of 20.0 cM; you cannot drill past 20.0
cM from this tab within a match's profile. But you could, and still can,
see matches from 8-20 cM in your main match list.

There's an interesting debate to be had on whether revising the cutoff
from 6 cM to 8 cM was beneficial for users (apparently, until 2016, it
used to go down as low as 5 cM), as well as the degree to which some of
these changes are really motivated by the desire to improve accuracy, as
opposed to AncestryDNA's engineers demanding this from within because
their job of running a gigantic match database while minimizing bugs is
hard. (Seen the "our backend servers are overtaxed at the moment"
message lately? I know I have.) But they didn't take 8-20 cM matches out
of Shared Matches; they were never there in the first place.

Adam Turner

In response to Jerri Friedman's post about no advance notice about
Ancestry's eliminating DNA matches below a low threshold, I posted the
following to this discussion group and the IAJGS Leadership Forum on
July 31. I have no affiliation with Ancestry but was on a call to
"select" posters/bloggers when they announced this and asked that it be
shared.

I posted to this group on Friday July 31 about the Ancestry changes-
when they delayed for one month from their original date giving people
adequate time to mark those with less than 8.0 cM with notes or adding
notes,  sending messages or adding them to a group.

Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee

Has any organized protest happened??? A coalition of groups should be
organized
asap, if that has not is not alreading happening.?? If not, customer group by
customer group should make a formal open communication to the
decision-makers at Ancestry.
What a short-sighted decision!?? Has JewishGen made a formal complaint?
Short-sighted to discard the fruits of the amazing technological
advancement that in some
cases is the only way to have made familial connection. Ancestry's very
existence is
based on a faith-based reason, leave-no-stone unturned approach to finding
as many of one's ancestors as possible. It's shocking that a
cost/benefit analysis would be holding sway.
Surely they can find a way to keep finding and retaining that level of
matching,retaining, and being creative
??in making that available, even if on a special, selective, on-demand
basis.
Ellen Slotoroff Zyroff
PISTERMAN (Bessarabia/Northern Moldova), ROTH (Bessarabia/Northern
Moldova), ZOLOTOROV/SLOTOROFF (Chernigov / Kiev, Ukraine),
LEVINE(Michalovka, Minsk), CHARKOVSKY/SHARKOVSKY (Ukraine), BLAUSTEIN
(Ukraine), RIBNICK (Belarus), SHEINISS (Belarus), ROGOWITZ (Belarus),
ZYRO (Zabolitiv, Western Ukraine $ Poland), TESLER (Horochiv, Volynia,
Westerb Ukraine), LIMON (Bereshtiko,Volynia, Western Ukraine), TAU
(Ukraine), KRANTZ (Ukraine).

On Thursday, September 3, 2020, 10:27:05 AM PDT, Teewinot
<teewinot13@...> wrote:
Seven days ago, AncestryDNA make a drastic unannounced change to the way
they report shared DNA matches. They stopped showing *any* matches
below 20 cM This is devastating to many people, because many important
matches occur right below 20 cM.

Also, as of September 1st, they removed *all* matches below 8.0 cM.
This action was announced on the website They said that if you starred
a match, created groups and put the matches in them or sent them a note,
those matches would be preserved.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who began frantically trying to save
every match they could, because, for the past week, the servers were
sluggish, kept crashing, and often went down for two hours or so at a
time. Ancestry finally had to post an apology and said they were
working on the problem. As of September 1st, when the change went into
effect, the servers were fully back to normal. I managed to save just
under 7,500 matches. I know there were many more I was unable to save
before the deadline, and wonder just what discoveries I've missed out on.

I had called AncestryDNA customer service to complain. The young man I
spoke to was shocked when I told him about the 20 cM limit on shared
matches. He told me that was never announced (no kidding!) and that the
customer service people weren't told about it either. (Unreal!) I also
told him that without the ability to see shared matches below 20 cM and
without the matches below 8.0 cM, I, and others, have very little hope
of being able to find out how more distant cousins are connected.

I told him I think I figured out a bit of a workaround, but it involves
an enormous amount more work, and both parties have to work together,
which means you'd have to contact every single person and gain their
cooperation for hours of work. This is totally insane!

I just discovered two distant cousins with many surnames in common, but
with these changes to AncestryDNA, we may never be able to find the
connection between us, and we really want to find it.

In all my years, I have never seen a business do such a thing. We all
paid for the data they gave us. Then they go and take the data away
from us!! No one asked *me* if I agreed to that! If they wanted to
make a change, they should have done it with new customers, and left us
old customers and our data and matching system alone!!

The young man in customer service filed two complaints for me. He also
gave me an email address to write to find out if the data was dumped or
stored somewhere. If it's stored, I want my data back!!

I wrote to the email address and got a "canned" response this morning.
I wrote them again, telling them I didn't appreciate that, and want my
questions answered.

I've also tried calling the corporate HQ, but no one answers. Probably
due to the pandemic. I will call again today.

I wanted to let you all know about this, because I'm discovering many
people had no idea these changes happened. They're quite upset when
they find out. AncestryDNA is nowhere near as useful as it was.

Jeri Friedman
Port Saint Lucie, Florida
--
teewinot13@...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RESEARCHING: FRIEDMAN, MILLER, BERKOWITZ (Grodno,
Poland/Russia/Belarus); GEIST (?,Russia); GLICKMAN, KLUGMAN, STURMAN,
KAPLAN, ROTENBERG (Bilgoraj, Lublin, Poland/Russia); LIEB/LEIBOWITZ,
BLAU (Jassy/Iasi, Romania); GALINSKY, GELLIS (Suwalki, Poland/Russia);
KRASNOPOLSKY, SILBERMAN/SILVERMAN (Krasnopol, Poland/Russia)
KOPCIANSKY (?, Poland/Russia); GOLDSTEIN, SCHRAGER (?, Romania);
CYRULNIK (Suwalki, Poland/Russia and Kalvarija, Lithuania)