The topic of Discussion Forum #1 is shown below. Please post your short essay in this forum and add valuable feedback to at least TWO of your classmates’ postings. There is no word limit of your essay. Facebook is facing backlash for a psychological study it performed without user consent. Facebook manipulated the message streams of nearly 700,000 users in 2012 to analyze their subsequent responses. The idea was to see whether these alterations would be enough to get Facebook users to post something similar in tone. Please see The Wall Street Journal blog below: (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. The Morning Risk Report: Facebook Research And Big-Data Risk By GREGORY J. MILLMAN Jul 7, 2014 6:27 am ET (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. Considering the long history of psychological experiments that permanently harmed unwitting people or animals, the reaction to Facebook (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.’s comparatively innocuous study seems exaggerated. The social network’s scandal erupted over revelations that it had merely manipulated users’ messages to analyze their subsequent messages. Although reporting by the Wall Street Journal (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. has revealed other research projects at the social network, some of which involve misrepresentations to users, none would rank high on the scale of horrors presented by a simple Google search for “unethical psychological experiments.” Dr. John M. Grohol, a researcher and founder of the psychology forum PsychCentral.com, said Facebook crossed the psychology profession’s ethical line by failing to get informed consent from research subjects on work that it intended to publish. “Companies can avoid this sort of ethical quagmire by keeping their research internal for improving their websites’ usability only–not to try and manipulate (ostensibly for profit?) their users’ behavior,” he explained. But Facebook’s reputation damage didn’t come just because it breached the professional ethics of psychologists. The scandal has much wider implications in the era of Big Data and analytics, when technology makes it possible to amalgamate information and discover behavioral implications in ways previously unimaginable. Steven Silberstein, senior vice president chief technology officer of the software and technology services company SunGard, explained in an interview, “Probably the opportunities are bigger than our ability to decide quickly what’s appropriate and what’s not. It’s hard to slow down technology development, but we probably have to speed up ethical understanding.” At minimum, he said that companies need to be transparent in what data are collected and how they’re used. Beyond that, though, he suggested it may be time for “a voluntary standard of behavior in regards to Big Data in the area of consumer intelligence.” This is causing problems for Facebook, including: Anger in the United States by consumers who feel their privacy has been violated. Although not likely illegal according to U.S. law, the study violated social conventions The possibility that it could be legally liable in the United Kingdom, which does have more stringent privacy laws The use of big data and analytics to analyze behavior implications not easily noticeable In the United States it would mainly be sociocultural forces. Experts say that Facebook will probably not get into legal trouble in the United States, but there is a consumer expectation of privacy, and consumers do not like their behavior being monitored without their express permission—whether or not they agreed to Facebook’s privacy policies. In the U.K., this is likely both sociocultural and legal/regulatory. According to this article https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2014/07/02/was-facebooks-mood-experiment-illegal/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. If U.K. user streams were manipulated, Facebook might have violated U.K. regulation concerning privacy. Big data and analytics involve technology. Technological forces are changing the landscape of behavioral studies as well as consumer expectations of privacy.
Question: Describe the marketing environmental forces that apply to this situation.