Netizens Use Blockchain for Apple Daily’s Content After Ban
Blockchain applications have started rocking the media. In a move that will have significant ramifications across the industry, cyber activists and IT professionals from Hong Kong are archiving 3.2 million web articles, videos, and audios from Apple Daily, after the news portal was forced to shut down, according to several reports. IT experts were mulling the best way to preserve the news portal’s content on a censorship-proof blockchain platform, including the content before 2002. Netizens were urged to compartmentalize thousands of domestic news articles and columns pertaining to security law and national issues and related content of Next Magazine, a sister concern. Foreign servers were used by these cyber activists and IT professionals to showcase the content on different periods across various formats. Unknown netizens kept loading the digital content of over 20 years at a furious pace on four online digital archives, the South China Morning Post reported.
However, the government of Hong Kong retains the powers under the national security law to remove or restrain such content, which it considers rebellious or breakaway in nature. The internet domains registering firm in Hong Kong earlier this year said that it would cancel the domains of any websites that flout governmental regulations or provoke unlawful activities. Admittance to HK Chronicles, a website that gives information on anti-government protests, was jammed by the Hong Kong Broadcast Network, the internet service provider. However, the rightful and lawful use of the internet would not result in its curtailment. The government of Hong Kong said reassuring the citizens and adding that restrictive measures were based on infallible proof according to Hong Kong laws. Archiving and uploading online content on the internet is not the first time for Hong Kong netizens. When RTHK, a domestic broadcaster, said it would remove documentaries from the social media platforms that were more than a year old, a similar step was taken by Hong Kong netizens.
