135th Block: Step aside, MBTI, here comes another made-up personality test

It's called SMLP, Spotify's Music Listening Personality

Dec 05, 2022

This week…

Big moving weekend, so I was barely online. But the bulk of posts on my social media feeds has been everyone’s Spotify Wrapped, and in particular, Spotify’s music listening personality.

I hope you still enjoy the selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.

AP fired a reporter after a dangerous blunder. Slack messages reveal a chaotic process

Max Tani for Semafor:

[James LaPorta’s] firing was first reported by the Daily Beast, and confirmed by the Washington Post. Both stories quoted AP sources and put the blame squarely on the reporter. The Beast reported that LaPorta left “the impression that the story’s sourcing had been approved.”
But the slack messages on which the incident played out tell a different story, of honest mistakes, internal confusion, and a lack of a clear process that led to a disaster for one of the few news organizations whose Twitter presence is an authoritative account of world affairs.

The Washington Post launches a year in news à la Spotify Wrapped

Hanaa’ Tameez for Nieman Lab:

When Spotify Wrapped first launched in December 2016, the streaming company proved user data could be artfully transformed into an engaging product users would share.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post launched its own personalized annual review that shows subscribers insights about the journalism they consumed in 2022 in a similar visual format. It’s technically called “Newsprint,” but almost everyone who shared their stats so far called it some variation of “Washington Post Wrapped.”

How personality tests infiltrated the world of work

Anna Samson for Huck:

Although personality tests, or psychometric tests, are nothing new – the ancient Greeks divided personalities into “the four temperaments” – the global personality test industry is now worth over $7 billion, and is expected to rise to over $16 billion by 2028. The most famous personality test, the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, was created by a mother-and-daughter duo with no formal psychological training. It was explicitly not intended to be used in the hiring process, but its popularity laid the groundwork for countless personality tests that are now used to vet candidates every day. Companies can buy personality tests from other companies, or devise their own tests in-house.
[…]
“The scientific accuracy of personality assessments is a matter of debate among experts,” says psychotherapist Desirée Silverstone. “Some believe that these assessments are quite accurate, while others believe that they are not very accurate at all. The main problem with determining the scientific accuracy of these assessments is that there is no agreed-upon definition for what constitutes a personality.”