Hong Kong internet users race to preserve Apple Daily online after newspaper buckles under weight of national security law crackdown
- City’s IT professionals mobilise 1,300-strong army to upload past articles to servers overseas before they are lost forever
- Move an act of defiance after week when senior executives at the paper were accused of breaking national security law
The abrupt closure of Apple Daily prompted some IT professionals in Hong Kong to mobilise online users to race against time to back up the 26-year-old newspaper’s digital content, with the Post finding at least four such archives online.
The move was an act of defiance against the authorities’ sweeping operations during a week when the newspaper’s assets were frozen, and the lead editorial writer and five executives were arrested for their alleged roles in publishing dozens of articles said to breach the national security law.
Calls to preserve the contents of the newspaper, which was known for its critical stance against Beijing and Hong Kong governments, began floating on online forums last Thursday, after the Apple Daily editor-in-chief, publisher and three other executives were arrested on suspicion of collusion with foreign forces.
“We spent a lot of time discussing the most efficient ways to archive millions of web pages and videos of Apple Daily before it shut down. But you know online discussions never point to a conclusion,” a veteran coder, who frequented the Reddit-like forum LIHKG, told the Post.
He estimated there were roughly 3.2 million online articles once available on the newspaper’s website, not including those published before 2002 that did not exist on the official site.