Top five April Fool’s Day news stories from Chinese tech firms

Fake news is officially allowed one day of the year: April 1 – April Fool’s Day. Western tech firms are known to have fun with it, especially search giant Google which this year adopted a “Where’s Waldo?” gag for Google Maps users. US carrier T-Mobile came out with a fictitious video ad for a smartshoephone. “From your favourite flip phone to the world’s first foot phone,” said the fake ad. Chinese technology firms also got into the spirit. Here are five of the best – the first three were verified by the companies as jokes, while the last two were reported to be April Fool’s jokes by local media:

1. Ant Financial, Alibaba Group’s payment affiliate and operator of Alipay, announced Block 7 – the world’s first blockchain paint. Vehicles painted with Block 7 become instantly interconnected with multi-level encryption and decentralised data input.