- Over 10,000 pages of material published by pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily have been uploaded to the Arweave platform
- The Hong Kong newspaper has recently been forced to close by the Chinese government who froze company assets
- The Arweave blockchain will publish the repository in the coming months
The pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily will live on uncensored on the Arweave blockchain after contributors began uploading thousands of articles from the now defunct newspaper. Apple Daily was forced to close after incurring the wrath of Chinese authorities in what freedom advocates have decried as yet more evidence that China is slowly eroding Hong Kong’s democratic core that has stood for over 150 years. The move to preserve Apple Daily’s historical output comes after activists rushed to upload investigative documentaries by Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK after the media company said it was removing all content older than one year from its social media channels.
Over 10,000 Pages of Apple Daily Content Already Uploaded
The push to upload Apple Daily’s catalogue of tens of thousands of articles to Arweave was started by a 21-year-old tech worker known only as Ho, who began uploading documents to the decentralized blockchain file storage platform. As of Friday there were more than 10,000 pages and other assets from Apple Daily on Arweave, with founder Sam Williams praising the “ferocity and courage” with which the Arweave community had taken to the task of preserving the work of Apple Daily:
Yesterday, pro-democracy Hong Kong news outlet Apple Daily was forced to close.
But not before activists in Hong Kong uploaded much of its contents to Arweave.
You can read about it in CNBC, Reuters, etc.:https://t.co/jrABuX0Bvw 1/4
— Sam Williams (@samecwilliams) June 24, 2021
Arweave Proves Purpose of Censorship Resistant Mediums
Arweave operates what it calls the Permaweb, which allows files to be stored on its blockchain for good – once they are approved by nodes they cannot be removed. The content on the Arweave blockchain is therefore censorship resistant, which in the case of Apple Daily is critical. The trove won’t be available to view for a few months as the Apple Daily repository is still in its beta phase, but we know that the material is all safely embedded in the Arweave blockchain.
For those who have always wondered what the benefit of a blockchain is over a spreadsheet, here is your answer in a nutshell.
