The Facebook event “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” was put up as a joke. This is the story about how a seemingly innocent joke can turn viral and become fake news. In other words, it is a cautionary tale for us all.

If you were required to re-enter your password in order to log in to Facebook today (28 September 2018), there’s a good reason: Facebook this morning revealed that it had suffered a massive breach, compromising as many as 50 million user accounts.