Hong Kong’s cyber-activists are working to save, and republish, the now shut down pro-democratic news tabloid, Apple Daily, by backing up its articles on the censor-proof blockchain platform, ARWeave.
Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper, was forced to shut down after the Hong Kong government froze all its assets and arrested its top executives.
The latest arrest happened this Sunday as Editorial Executive, Fung Wai-kong (57), was arrested at Hong Kong’s international airport. He was allegedly planning to travel to the UK, reported The Guardian.
21-year-old Ho, who works in tech and did not give his first name because of the sensitivity of the matter, began to upload Apple Daily articles on decentralized file storage platform ARWeave, earlier this week.
Similar to BitTorrent, ARWeave breaks down a file into bits of information distributed over an open network of anonymous computers around the world.
More than 4,000 articles dating all the way back to 2012 are now made available on ARWeave.
Using blockchain technology to fight back against censorship is a growing trend in Hong Kong. With pro-democracy title, Citizen News, recently revealing to Reuters that is has been using a the decentralised registry, LikeCoin, to catalogue its images.
Still in its beta, this registry tracks changes made to its content by changing its digital fingerprint. This helps notify the creator of any changes made to their content. LikeCoin is expected to launch in the coming months and would be another option for cyber activists to avoid censorship.