# "And We Will Fight For Our Race!" A Measurement Study of Genetic Testing Conversations on Reddit and 4chan

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.09735 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09735/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jan 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- ["Do Anything Now": Characterizing and Evaluating In-The-Wild Jailbreak Prompts on Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03825/) (2023)
- [Detecting Harmful Memes and Their Targets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.00413/) (2021)
- [Detecting and Understanding Harmful Memes: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04274/) (2022)
- [Detecting Harmful Content On Online Platforms: What Platforms Need Vs. Where Research Efforts Go](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00153/) (2021)
- [Why So Toxic? Measuring and Triggering Toxic Behavior in Open-Domain Chatbots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03463/) (2022)
- [On the Evolution of (Hateful) Memes by Means of Multimodal Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06573/) (2022)
- [DISARM: Detecting the Victims Targeted by Harmful Memes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05738/) (2022)
- [Hostility Detection in Hindi leveraging Pre-Trained Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.05494/) (2021)
- [minOffense: Inter-Agreement Hate Terms for Stable Rules, Concepts, Transitivities, and Lattices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17984/) (2023)
- [Gendered Pathways in AI Companionship: Cross-Community Behavior and Toxicity Patterns on Reddit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01073/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Progress in genomics has enabled the emergence of a booming market for "direct-to-consumer" genetic testing. Nowadays, companies like 23andMe and AncestryDNA provide affordable health, genealogy, and ancestry reports, and have already tested tens of millions of customers. At the same time, alt- and far-right groups have also taken an interest in genetic testing, using them to attack minorities and prove their genetic "purity." In this paper, we present a measurement study shedding light on how genetic testing is being discussed on Web communities in Reddit and 4chan. We collect 1.3M comments posted over 27 months on the two platforms, using a set of 280 keywords related to genetic testing. We then use NLP and computer vision tools to identify trends, themes, and topics of discussion. Our analysis shows that genetic testing attracts a lot of attention on Reddit and 4chan, with discussions often including highly toxic language expressed through hateful, racist, and misogynistic comments. In particular, on 4chan's politically incorrect board (/pol/), content from genetic testing conversations involves several alt-right personalities and openly antisemitic rhetoric, often conveyed through memes. Finally, we find that discussions build around user groups, from technology enthusiasts to communities promoting fringe political views.