Chapter Twenty-SevenHOW TO PROPERLY USE PERSONALITY DATA
Soon after we launched our first product in 2015, the technology press started to get curious. As the CEO, I took all of the interviews I could with online publications, podcasts, and radio shows. We had some wonderful, productive conversations about personality profiles and using empathy to improve communication, and we shared all we could about how Crystal worked. It was invigorating to bring this message to the world and explain how personality data could help people be more connected and engaged with each other in the future.
Yet, we were surprised when we saw the salacious slant of some of the headlines. A few referred to us as “creepy” or implied that we were “getting inside your head.” It was enough to get our attention and rethink our messaging, because the world was clearly skeptical.
Even though our product was using personality models that had been around for thousands of years and only drawing inferences from publicly available data, the results were often so accurate that they could feel invasive. Most of our users understood the functionality of our products, but for those who didn't, it could seem like Crystal was somehow accessing people's secrets and making them available for anyone willing to pay us. How else could a company get such accurate psychographic information?
In the years after, the public conversation around data privacy and AI quickly accelerated. In the United States, Facebook become embroiled ...
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