With everyone all atwitter about The New York Times paywall, the Huffington Post decided to play a little April Fools joke. New York Times employees who tried to access the Huffington Post's site on April 1 received a message informing them that Times employees -- and only Times employees -- now would have to pay to access online content, reported Editor & Publisher.

The joke comes as a response to the NY Times' implementation last week of a paywall that will charge readers who want to access more than 20 articles, photos, videos, or other content, per month. The paywall offers various subscription levels, ranging from $15 to $35 a month, depending on whether readers want smartphone access and the NYT app.

Perhaps a dig to what many have called a complicated pay system, the Huffington Post hoax post said NY Times employees "can view the first 6 letters of each word at no charge (including slideshows of adorable kittens). After 6 letters, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber. You may choose to subscribe to see the rest of each word individually, or choose a package to access all words of more than 6 letters."

Playing up on the controversies about ways around the New York Times paywall -- such as via Twitter -- the HuffoPo also catalogued ways NYT employees could read the Post for free. For example, "If you come in through Facebook, you'll be able to access for free all stories involving animals born with extra limbs."

Also, alluding to New York Times reporter Judith Miller's inaccurate or false stories supporting the Iraq war, the HuffPo article, signed by president and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington, concluded, "Stories that aggregate falsehoods to support an administration's efforts to take the country into a disastrous, decade-long war based on lies will always remain free."

The April Fools joke follows NYT executive editor Bill Keller's attack on the Huffington Post in March, in which he referred to Arianna Huffington as the "queen of aggregation" who has "discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come."

The same day as the HuffPo's April Fools joke, the New York Times Magazine published an interview with Huffington, in which she said the HuffPo didn't kill journalism; new technologies did.