Well, the other notable fact about this story is it's Blackstone, which has a record of giving managers a lot of leeway to do anything to juice the numbers.

Two examples:

1) Hiring 14 year old slaughterhouse workers (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pssi-hired-same-child-t...)

2) Gamifying of one its genealogy websites that tracked cemetery markers, which resulted in people "claiming" victims of mass shootings for points (https://dna-explained.com/2022/06/02/find-a-grave-owned-by-a...)

ETA

People have asked about the second example. In a nutshell, Ancestry purchased Find-A-Grave in 2013, and Blackstone acquired Ancestry in 2020.

Originally, Find a Grave was basically used by amateur genealogists to check the names and dates on gravestones across North America. So, if you want to verify Grandma Smith's burial location and other gravestone data three states away, you could search the database for free. Volunteers could submit photos and other data.

Blackstone brought in a Facebook executive to run its genealogy business, and gamified Find A Grave for engagement/revenue purposes (Find A Grave is top of funnel for Ancestry subscriptions and also is heavily blanketed in ad networks.)

Gamification led to some very ugly situations, and as I recall they barely backed down over this. Per Roberta Estes, an experienced genealogist cited above:

The problem is that finding your loved one’s memorial, often with incorrect information, created by a stranger is unexpectedly jarring, at best. Especially to discover that your family member was only a trophy harvest whose memorial was created hours after they died. Then, having to ask (sometimes beg an unresponsive person) for the transfer of their memorial to you, only to have the creator’s name forever associated with the memorial adds insult to injury. ...

Who in their right mind would think that entering those massacred children into Find a Grave immediately was acceptable by any criteria? Any standards of decency? And why would Find a Grave tolerate this for even a minute? Death is traumatic for family members under the “best” of circumstances and it only goes downhill from there.

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rationalist 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Geez... Item 2 could be its own HN post.

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tptacek an hour ago | parent [-]

The second one is... Ancestry? They're Blackstoning Ancestry.

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ilamont an hour ago | parent [-]

It's Find-a-Grave, an indie genealogy site that was acquired by Ancestry, which itself was acquired by Blackstone sometime in the last decade. Blackstone brought in an ex-Facebook executive to run it, and this was one of the results.

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tptacek an hour ago | parent [-]

Right so the premise here is that somewhere high atop 345 Park Avenue a Blackstone executive is twirling his mustache while saying "gamify the gravesites". Seems implausible. Ancestry was not a good company to begin with (you know what organization really does a good job of this, by the way? The Latter Day Saints), and this is fully on brand for them.

	▲	ilamont an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> somewhere high atop 345 Park Avenue a Blackstone executive is twirling his mustache while saying "gamify the gravesites". I don't think so. It's more like "hit the numbers no matter what, we don't care what you do to hit them." They hire managers that are ruthless about following through. IMHO this style of ownership is more likely to lead to otherwise avoidable situations involving lax security, teenaged slaughterhouse workers, and trophy hunters on genealogy sites.