Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I mean that's pay girl. And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Welcome back to Tweed Trends. Today is National Internet Day. And so you realize attempts to send the first internet message date back as far as 1969 at UCLA.
This interchange happened between a guy named Charlie Klein and Bill Duvall at Stanford. And you know, it wasn't introduced to the rest of us until much later, but fast forward 50 years. And it's impossible to calculate the effect that the internet has had on society as a whole. I mean, today we've got email along with access to infinite possibilities literally in our back pockets.
And the majority of us were introduced to this phenomenon with this simple statement. Let's start with the introduction of Facebook News. And I know that probably sounds like an oxymoron to say Facebook and news in the same sentence, because pretty much Facebook is the highlights reel from your friends. All of the cool stuff, all the places they've been and the things they've been doing, the things they've been eating, everything looks lovely on Facebook, right?
But now, Mark Zuckerberg and his team, they want to roll out a news option for you. And they're saying that it's going to feature a wide range of content across four categories of publishers. They'll be general, topical, diverse, and local news. And so they say they've done a lot of research, and they've reached out, and they found ways to identify their publishers.
And they have to, of course, follow the Facebook publisher guidelines as well as there's a third party fact checker for the content, so that there's no misinformation that's put out there, because we know Facebook has already caught heat for the misinformation, especially during election seasons, where bad information has been put out there. But basically what they're saying is that Facebook news was built to bring people closer to the stories that affect their lives, and that they're going to continue to listen and improve so that they can roll out a bigger and better product. So right now, you may not have access to Facebook news, but in the coming months, it will become more open to everyone else, because I don't have access to Facebook news just yet. But keep an eye out for it, because it is rolling out.
Check it out, Facebook news, what do you think? Check it out. On to Google, they just announced a major search algorithm change that I am actually pretty excited about. So now this new algorithm is based on something called Burt, a bidirectional encoder, representations from transformers.
Phew, that was difficult. Let's just call it Burt, but let me explain what Burt does. So now Burt for consumers is going to be great. Burt for some companies, not so great, but not everybody's going to have issues with it, only some people.
But so to give an example of how Burt works, let's say you type in a search engine, can you get medicine for someone pharmacy? The old algorithm would throw certain words out, and basically medicine and pharmacy would be the main words picked up, and therefore it would give you information about pharmacies and getting medicine. But the purpose of your sentence was really, are there any that I can go pick up the medicine for somebody else? And that is where the algorithm was bad for consumers, because then you end up having to pull out your tosaurus and come up with new ways to say things using different words, trying to get the search engine to find what it is that you're looking for.
And so there's another one that they gave. Another example was parking on a hill with no curb. The old algorithm would discard the word no, therefore you would get information about parking on a hill with a curb. Well, of course, you turn your wheel in different ways for different situations.
And if you're looking, trying to figure out how to do it with no curb, and they're constantly telling you how to do it with a curb, it's going to be a little frustrating. So basically, Burt is just another step in Google's effort to understand what people want when they're searching for things. And they feel like the more you deliver what people want, the more likely you are to rank high in search results. I mean, it only makes sense.
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Slash O-U-S-T, O-S-T. Although the internet is an awesome tool to use, of course, you know there's always going to be malicious people out there to take a good thing and turn it into something just plain old nasty. And because of that, there are so many fraudulent sites, email scams, and other forms of deception out there on the internet. People have lost so much money, and it is a crying shame.
But you know what? In honor of National Internet Day, I'm going to point out eight of the top internet fraud scams of all times. Starting with number one, email phishing. In this scam, you receive a message claiming some person or bank or whatever is letting you know that they've made changes, and they need to confirm your information.
So give me your account number. Give me your password. Give me all this information. Don't ever give anyone anything.
Ever. Number two, tech support scams. Kind of like that same thing where someone reaches out to you and say, hey, there's something wrong with your computer. Can you give me access to it?
And I'll fix it for you. Don't do it. Number three, online dating scams. Catfishin.
That with the online dating scams, it was one of those things where you would meet somebody online. They tell you that they love you. They have limited pictures. Or it just seems way too good to be true because you know what you look like, and you're looking at them, and like, wow, why would they want me?
Because it's not that person. That picture that you're looking at isn't the person that you're thinking it is. And then all of a sudden, they're going to start asking you for money. They need help with their bills.
They want to travel to come see you. Can you get me a plane ticket? Don't believe the hype. Nigerian 419 email scams is number four on the list.
This one is probably the oldest one in the book, where it's somebody from a foreign language. And they need help getting their money. And they don't know how to do it because they need an American to help them get the money because somebody died and left them a bunch of money or something like that. And if you help them out, then they'll give you a cut.
But in a lot of cases, it's like you have to supply some type of money in that too. Well, why would I have to do that if you got all the loot? Don't do it. Number five, social media fraud.
So you can be online, say Facebook and your friends account gets hacked. And then all of a sudden, you get a message from this friend saying, yeah, I went on vacation. And I'm stranded. I got a flat tire.
I got a this. I got a that. I need help. Can you wire me some money so that I can get back home?
And because it's your friend, you're thinking, oh man, call your friend first because they're probably sitting at home on the couch, watching TV, and not where this person is telling you that they are. Number six, buying and selling scams. You never know what you're ordering online from some of these random places that you've never heard of before. So you might buy something or it might be from a person like an eBay or something like that.
You buy something and you may never get the product. Or you get it and it is like way low grade quality stuff. And you're like, oh my gosh, I paid what for this piece of crap? Oh my gosh.
So be where when buying stuff online. Number seven, fake virus warnings. You see them all the time. They pop up.
And because some people are thinking that my computer is really smart and he's going to tell me if they've got a virus. Don't believe it. Don't touch it. Don't click on it.
Get out of it as soon as possible. And then last but not least, fake charities, sweetstakes, and other type things. These things can even come in through your phone. So watch out for your text messages as well.
But it's just like the phishing emails. And you should never respond to unsolicited messages like that. All right. Stay vigilant against dangerous internet fraud, guys.
The internet is a great place to be. But sometimes not so much. That's today's show, guys. Thanks for joining me.
Do me a favor, though. Head on over to Twitter and follow me at hevet. That's at heyevet. tte.
Or just look for the hashtag tweet trends. So now for this national internet day, how about celebrating by maybe changing up your passwords or make some pretty cool memes? One other thing you could do, complete opposite spectrum, unplug for the day. And then hop right back on the next day, because it's hard to stay away.
But some people do it. Maybe you enjoy your day. And I'll see you on Thursday, guys. Bye now.