AncestryDNA - Numbers of "4th cousins and closer"

I was going to make my next post about DNA and Genetic Networks, as I'd like to refer to the networks when writing the "52 ancestors" posts.  However, Ancestry seem to have made a change and I thought I'd write about that instead.

I was alerted to this change yesterday when a 'Help' request was posted on the DNA help for Genealogy (UK) FaceBook Group - the poster had noticed that the number of their Ancestry "4c & closer" matches had suddenly reduced.  Of course, that probably sent all of us to check our own results.

I currently have 182 4c & closer according to my DNA 'landing page':

When I went to the list, it was clear Ancestry has added some new search filters (there was a helpful message telling me about it, and giving an overview of what they were 🙂 ) 

And when I used the filter for the Close matches, it did indeed show me as having less than the 'landing page' shows - 149 instead of 182:

Donna Rutherford, one of the FaceBook Group admins, said she'd heard that Ancestry had changed the threshold for the 'close matches" to 21 cM, which seems to be backed up by the filter description.  And the filtered list did indeed end at matches sharing 21cM with me, rather than the previous 20 cM.

However, when I checked the unfiltered listing of matches - the 'Close matches' still went down to the people who were previously on the list, ie all 182, and who shared 20cM with me 

[Note: Although it looks like some of the 'Distant matches" also share 20 cM, the figures are rounded - when extracted using the DNA Gedcom Client App, the last close match in the image above shares 20.0201 cM and the first Distant shares 19.9934 cM.]

So, is this a genuine change in policy by Ancestry, which still needs to work through the system properly so that the match list split between "Close" and "Distant" agrees with the filter. Or has someone just set the filter threshold incorrectly? 🙂

Update!

When I came to write this post today, I tried to redo some of the images from yesterday, as they were just mobile screenshots.   However, already the situation has changed.  The filter itself now shows my total "4c & closer" matches as 182 - but it still indicates the lowest quantity of shared DNA is 21 cM and the actual list of filtered matches still ends with the 149th, even though the unfiltered list goes up to the 182nd match.

Since the total has changed back to the original figure, I suspect the intention may not be to increase the threshold permanently (but I could be wrong!)

Certainly the changes are still a 'work in progress'.

Another Update (25 January 2020)

I noticed yesterday that the Close matches filter does now show the cM range for 4th cousins or closer as 20 - 3490 shared centimorgans and both the main, unfiltered, list and the filtered 'close match' list ends with the same match for me.

Whatever caused the initial issue has clearly been resolved and Ancestry have not changed their thresholds.

*DNA help for Genealogy (UK)