diff -r e453c69821f8 -r b677bccf74b9 mercurial/pure/charencode.py
--- a/mercurial/pure/charencode.py	Mon Feb 21 10:47:08 2022 -0700
+++ b/mercurial/pure/charencode.py	Mon Feb 21 10:47:31 2022 -0700
@@ -67,10 +67,7 @@
         raise ValueError
 
 
-if pycompat.ispy3:
-    _utf8strict = r'surrogatepass'
-else:
-    _utf8strict = r'strict'
+_utf8strict = r'surrogatepass'
 
 
 def jsonescapeu8fallback(u8chars, paranoid):