Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now.
On today's episode let's take a look at Facebook scams and misinformation.
Way back in episode 83 I talked about urban legend emails.
Now these were emails with lots of misinformation in them.
This kind of thing has now moved over to Facebook where you see it almost everyday.
For instance you may see posts in your Newsfeed from friends that have news and information
in them and you kind of feel that it might not be true.
Sure enough if you search online you can find out that they are wrong.
It's usually very easy to search and find out if something is not true.
Just take a piece of text from the post and search on that.
Then the information comes up.
A lot of times people are not actually writing these things of course.
They are just reposting and liking and commenting on them and they end up on your Newsfeed because
somebody you are friends with took an action on their Newsfeed.
A lot of these things have to do with Facebook itself.
For instance, this was a chain letter that went around over the last few months where
it basically scares everybody into thinking that their private posts can now be seen by
anybody using the Facebook search.
Well, the fact is that only if you had your post set to being public or it can be shared
with friends of friends can people who are not your friends see it.
What is worse about this is that it asks your friends to take action which is unnecessary
and then it asks you to repost it so it becomes a chain letter that keeps going throughout
filled with misinformation.
Now if you want to find out which of these is true and which of these isn't it is very
easy.
Just need to go to a web site like Snopes or just do a Goggle search for whatever you
are looking for and maybe put Facebook and scam after it.
If you are look at Snopes you can see if you search for Facebook that a ton of stuff comes
up.
There are tons of things in here, most of them not true or are misleading in some way.
So it is very easy to do a search and actually come up with lots of information about how
that post came around and what is means and what it doesn't mean.
Now here is something else you may have seen.
One of these two easy quizzes.
They are usually something like this.
Like name a city that doesn't have the letter e in it or something.
They are really hard to resist.
You immediately think of one answer, then another, then another and then you just have
to comment and put your answers because you think you are so smart.
Well, these are very easy for a reason.
They want to get you in there and get you commenting.
The reason for that is something called EdgeRank.
You see when a company or an organization has a Facebook page or person has their own
personal page their are judged by something called EdgeRank.
You see you might notice that not everybody that you follow on Facebook and every page
you follow on Facebook appears on your Newsfeed all the time.
This is because Facebook kind of judges whether or not a post is important and that is how
it makes it to your Newsfeed.
Now if somebody posts all the time and nobody likes their stuff and nobody comments on their
stuff then their Edge Rank is low and their stuff doesn't seem to be very important.
But if somebody posts something like this and gets hundreds of comments it drives up
their EdgeRank so when they post something else, maybe a paid advertisement or something
like that they get a lot more attention on the Newsfeed.
So by commenting and liking this kind of thing you actually are giving more EdgeRank to the
original poster who will then be able to use that in some sort of way.
So it is not necessarily harmful to you but you should know that there is another side
to it and there is a reason these things are there.
The same thing is true when something asks you to like something.
A lot of these are fake, you know, showing you a person who supposedly has an illness
or like this if you think they are beautiful or like this if you think they can beat this,
like this if you hate cancer.
That kind of thing.
These are all there to get lots of likes to build up EdgeRank for whoever had originally
posted it so that they can do other things later on.
Now have you seen this quote recently.
Or maybe other quotes attributed to famous people.
Well guess what!
This one Albert Einstein never said that.
This happens all the time.
Misinformation like this.
If you do some research you will find out that originally this quote was attributed
to anonymous.
It was probably made up by somebody that just wanted to make a point and then later on somebody
threw Albert Einstein's name onto it.
I hate this type of misinformation.
The rule I follow is if I get a piece of information, whether it is a quote, news story, some facts,
whatever it is if I want to pass it onto somebody I'll go verify it myself.
I will look for a news source or some other information source that will make me feel
that yes, this is true, before I pass it on.
Now it is important to realize that passing something on is as simple as liking it or
commenting on it.
If you do that you are basically saying that you approve of the information and then your
friends may see.
So even just liking or commenting on something kind of is like passing it on to people.
Then of course there are real scams.
Things that are trying to basically get something from you.
Don't ever give anybody your password.
Don't ever respond to an email from Facebook saying something asking about your password
or personal information.
Facebook will never send that kind of thing out.
Always be skeptical of any information or any request for information you get whether
it is on Facebook, email, or some other way.
Hope you found this useful.
Until next time this is Gary with
MacMost Now