Why Techrights and Many Other Sites Stopped Doing April Fools’ Day Articles
Some time around 2014/15 the term "fake news" was popularised if not misused. It was mostly used in China to describe news unflattering to the regime, CPC, which is sometimes abbreviated as CCP. Later on left-leaning people used the same term (in English) to describe news publications (or publishing houses/publishers/channels) favourable to right-wing causes. By 2016 the term was sort of hijacked and 'misappropriated' to describe critics of the right, notably those protesting MAGA/Cheeto.
The term has become very fluid, like the word "nazi" or "fascist" or "woke" in 2026. Overused terms lose their impact or the ability to shock/alarm.
Then came all sorts of "apps" and sites that claimed to tackle fake news by broad classification, flagging and so on. Well before slop (made by LLMs) it was "bad optics" to have satire or humour in a site, irrespective of the day of the year.
This week a prolific BSD-centric writer recalls "April Fools’ Day 2003," back when he "wrote an article" (that wasn't real). Before he did science fiction it was considered OK to make satirical or sarcastic articles, like many press released that came out of FFII up until not too long ago (the Web probably stopped about half a decade ago, FFII still did it in 2024).
Now, in 2026, doing an April Fools’ Day article puts one at risk of getting labelled "fake" or "unserious" or something to that effect.
We've done no April Fools’ Day articles for a very long time.
Unfortunately, the current political climate - and online discourse in general - is dooming humour and banter; many things can be deemed intolerant (e.g. racist) and making jokes can hurt one's credibility, even if such jokes are obvious (rhetorical) and genuinely funny. █
Image source: Mr. Grimaldi as Clown