Traditionally, brands and people would have been celebrating April Fools’ day with pranks and tricks. This year is different as corporate bodies and governments have decided to skip the pranks so that they are not seen as insensitive to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Tech giant Google, famous for its annual pranks, canceled the tradition. According to report from Business Insider, Google instructed its teams to skip the annual tradition out of respect to people fighting the novel coronavirus.
“Under normal circumstances, April Fool’s is a Google tradition and a time to celebrate what makes us an unconventional company. This year, we’re going to take the year off from that tradition out of respect for all those fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. Our highest goal right now is to be helpful to people, so let’s save the jokes for next April, which will undoubtedly be a whole lot brighter than this one,” said Google chief marketing officer Lorraine Twohill in the memo.
“We’ve already stopped any centralized April Fool’s efforts but realize there may be smaller projects within teams that we don’t know about. Please suss out those efforts and make sure your teams pause on any jokes they may have planned — internally or externally,” she added.
On Tuesday, Thailand said that April Fool’s Day jokes about the virus could be punished under a law carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison.
The government tweeted that “It’s against the law to fake having COVID-19 this April Fools’ Day.”
Germany health ministry also advised under the heading “Corona is no joke”, the public not to make up stories related to the virus.
India’s Maharashtra state’s cyber security unit threatened to take legal action against anyone spreading fake news on April Fools’ Day.
“The state govt won’t allow anyone to spread rumors/panic on #Corona,” Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh tweeted, adding that he had instructed the authorities to “act swiftly & strongly (against) such miscreants”.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said on Facebook that people should not prank about the virus, adding that anyone spreading rumors or false information could face up to three years in jail and/or a fine of up to NT$3 million ($99,200).
Over 850,000 people have been infected by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). This is no joke.
