“I have never imagined that my years of hard work as a writer can go up in smoke in a split second, until the day Apple Daily announces its closure.” Pui, former columnist of Hong Kong daily newspaper Apple Daily, says.
Hong Kong was once a bastion of press freedom. However, the enactment of National Security Law (NSL) in 2020 has transformed the city, despite the high degree of autonomy and rights the Chinese Government had promised in 1997.
Crackdown On Free Speech
Being “vaguely defined with harsh penalties” as the New York Times describes, the NSL criminalises “conspiring to print, publish, distribute or display seditious publications”, journalism can be defined as a crime. Apart from continuous arrests of journalists, closures of news outlets had put freedom of public information at stake.
Preserving Speech Freedom with Blockchain
When the traditional model of journalism, where writers publish their works via media platforms regulated by the governments, no longer provides freedom of expression, Hong Kong media workers and readers turn to the decentralised blockchain technology. When the closure of Apple Daily became predictable, Hong Kong netizens had then begun backing up Apple Daily articles using ARWeave, the decentralized file storage platform. This marked the first well-known blockchain usage on content in Hong Kong.
After preserving the existing archive, Hong Kong media workers started looking for ways to withstand the censorship. Some of them, including Pui, turned to “decentralised publishing” (DePub) using “LikeCoin”.
“The demand to put content on blockchain is universal, but when Hongkongers have all of a sudden started living in an authoritarian city which used to be somewhat relatively autonomous, people started to feel the need for this technology,” said Kin Ko, the founder of DePub protocol LikeCoin.
Internet As A Walled Garden
When Ko first joined the Likecoin team, his goal was to simply “support writers and conserve journalism.” “Many think the internet is free and open, but it in fact is just another walled garden.” Ko said, “There wasn’t only a single censorship occurrence that made me realise the need of decentralisation, but instead, the whole internet ecosystem is dominated by a small handful of tech giants.”
To illustrate, Ko mentioned Xanga, the once-popular journaling platform. Similarly, centralised publishing platforms can also be shutted down at any moment without political pressure.
“Depub (Decentralised Publishing) is to own your own content for real,” said Ko. Closure of news outlets raises concerns about freedom to publish. And LikeCoin aims to tackle those problems. “Once everyone has ownership and autonomy over our own content, it cannot be erased by a platform, for example, Xanga, when it closes.”
What is LikeCoin, or Blockchain?
Likecoin was launched in beta in 2019, initially with a team mainly based in Hong Kong. Simply put, LikeCoin is a protocol that helps writers to publish content on blockchain, at the same time reward its user with LikeCoin’s cryptocurrency token, which guarantees content ownership and at the same time monetise creative content for independent writers.
“With blockchain’s immutability nature, once content is registered on the LikeCoin chain, it cannot be removed,” Ko said.
Switching to DePub
Before their closures, some Hong Kong independent news outlets, including the Stand News and Citizen News, also used LikeCoin to generate extra rewards for content creators. Another crucial example is Matters.news (Matters), a Chinese-language publishing platform which is known as an alternative to Medium, that publishes with LikeCoin by default.
“At first, I was just glad that there was another platform to publish my work, and the blockchain technology behind wasn’t really my focus, until the closure of Apple Daily,” Pui, who began publishing on Matters in 2018, said.
Pui has been working full-time in media outlets for years. Besides his full time job, he runs Photogstory blog for his passion in photography and has been regularly contributing to Stand News and Apple Daily under its name.
“News is the first draft of history,” said Pui. “If news is removed, the piece of history will disappear. When Stand News and Apple Daily announced their cessations of operations, netizens raced to backup contents. But if we start publishing content or uploading news footage on decentralised platforms, even if certain websites are shutted down in the future, history can still be preserved.”
Generating profit
YM, a Matters reader, is an example of readers using DePub to support writers one appreciates. During the Hong Kong protests in 2019, journalist Ranson Chan was attacked by a man while live streaming. YM sent him some LikeCoin to show his appreciation.
“I know some writer friends earn a decent amount of LikeCoin by writing on Matters and it makes me see the potential in DePub.” YM used to subscribe to Citizen News and Apple Daily. However, since the collapse of media outlets, journalists are running their blogs or social media accounts on their own. “In the future I’ll reward independent journalists with LikeCoin, I think it could be a way out.”
Future of LikeCoin
As of late September 2022, there are more than 98,000 pieces of registered content on LikeCoin and over 9,000 sites using its service, including independent news outlets.
“DePub has its potential but commercially it is difficult to become mass.” Charles Mok, Hong Kong-based IT advocate who is a former lawmaker representing the IT functional constituency, said. Blockchain, for a lot of people, still means investing in cryptocurrencies to hit the jackpot. Most writers in Hong Kong would still prefer centralised platforms such as Medium or Patron. “LikeCoin is an interesting use of the technology but its usability is what stops people from switching.” Mok said.
When LikeCoin was first launched, one of the biggest challenges was to explain the concept of LikeCoin. Some might criticise LikeCoin’s capability by asking “can you buy Wonton noodles with LikeCoin?” And this is what Ko said: “Back in the days, we didn’t have services like payWave either, until it became widely circulated. And that is why popular science is essential too.”
“We talk about decentralisation all the time, and we want to start from ourselves. It’s a kind of education, at the same time a lesson for us,” said Ko.