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Comment by billhendricksjr | Hacker News Reader

This itself, is an April Fools joke I hope. How meta ;-)

Doesn't seem so, unless it's by the Chinese news agency itself: http://weibo.com/1699432410/DoUipcOni?from=page_100206169943...

Google Translate gives me: "Today is the West so-called "April Fool." "Fool's Day" is not in line with our cultural tradition, does not meet the socialist core values, I hope we do not believe rumors, do not spread rumors, do not pass rumors"

And the account seems to be "verified" by Weibo.

I think there's a big difference between what that tweet says and having "banned April Fools". But what do I know :-)

It was an opinion piece, but a editorial. WaPo really tried hard to over analyze that post.

After all, Xinhua has traditionally avoided publishing opinions because their main role is a news agency, but with social media there is a lot less restraint than before.

There's absolutely nothing in that post that makes me think it's an opinion piece or an editorial. It's a regular news entry, and a very misleading one, if not outright malicious.

The Weibo handle quoted in the WaPo article was named "Xinhua Opinions/Viewpoints", does not get more obvious than that.

And the Washington Post article clearly says, despite of that, that the April Fools day was banned. Read the title.

And how that proves that the April 1st is banned? The "fool's joke" here is just the article title, itself demonstrating the spreading of inaccurate information, which is day as usual for most of the media anyway. Really a bit of meta.

That's just clickbait, happens everyday :)

That was why it's so meta!

Stop the presses, HN also mostly manages to "ban" April 1st from the first page. And never succeeds completely.

Fascinating that HN user 'paradite 's personal opinion is exactly the same wording as the official government press release.

It is exactly the same because I quoted them from the WSJ article.

And to give you more insights on this matter, I shall use my response from another reply: Honesty and integrity has always been part of the China's cultural tradition and it was only recently added into list of "socialist core values". It is reflective of the general consensus of population on the core characteristics of a Chinese person, and not related to the Chinese government specifically. Hence there is nothing wrong with discouraging spreading of rumours (as NH now correctly named the title of this submission).

It's not. This has been reported previously on dates other than April 1st.

Was the "ban" reported or the fact that "it was on 1st of April" won't protect the Chinese from the law against knowingly spreading false information?

The former. It's not just April 1st, the PRC isn't too fond of satire.

> The former.

You mean the later I guess (just the law against the misinformation, not just on 1st of April)?

Isn't saying "No joke" in the headline kind of cheating, though?

I wish it was banned globally.

Why?

I guess, because of the effect of the "internet social media amplification." Ah those foregone times when we'd just be "pranked" directly by a person we can touch, or at most once a day from the media.

>by a person we can touch

Yes. Possibly with a stout stick. For some reason I really, really dislike a whole day when everyone is doing their best to spam me with misinformation for teh lulz.

Wasn't it?

It was(not).

April Fool jokes were banned globally, but it's only a crime starting next year.

Please do not joke that it's not illegal, this is serious, don't risk it!

Oh no, think of all the COBOL programs that will have to be updated by next year!

And just a tad offensive.

Humor is a great way to spread a message. Although China is an easy target. Try doing the same for putin or ISIS.

Maybe I'm too tense in these days of tensions.

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