The Problem

Centralized platforms can remove content at the request of governments, corporations, or internal policy teams. When Apple Daily, Hong Kong's last pro-democracy newspaper, was forced to shut down under China's National Security Law in June 2021, decades of journalism were at risk of disappearing entirely.

Apple Daily on Arweave

An anonymous group called dAppleDaily used ArDrive to permanently archive approximately 5,600 Apple Daily news articles onto Arweave. Once stored, the articles became impossible for any government, corporation, or individual to censor, modify, or delete.

Each article exists as a transaction on Arweave's blockweave. The data is replicated across a decentralized network of miners worldwide. There is no server to seize, no database to drop, no hosting provider to pressure.

Recognition in the U.S. Senate

U.S. Senator Pat Toomey cited this archive during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on cryptocurrencies, stating:

"Arweave makes it impossible for the Chinese government to destroy Apple Daily's work, no matter how hard it tries."

This marked one of the first times a U.S. senator publicly acknowledged permanent decentralized storage as a tool for protecting free speech.

Ukraine War Documentation

Separately, over 6 million pieces of data documenting the Russia-Ukraine conflict have been archived on Arweave, creating a tamper-proof historical record. This includes photos, videos, social media posts, and government communications that might otherwise be deleted or disputed.

Bloomberg covered this effort, noting that the decentralized storage network was being used to preserve evidence in real time as the conflict unfolded.

Internet Archive Partnership

In July 2020, Arweave partnered with the Internet Archive to store website metadata collected by the Wayback Machine. The initial archive included over 700,000 torrent files of Internet Archive data.

The partnership provides a cryptographically verifiable, fault-tolerant, censorship-resistant backup of one of the most important archives on the internet. If the Internet Archive's centralized servers were ever compromised, the Arweave copies would remain intact and accessible.

COVID-19 Censorship Resistance

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arweave was used to archive information that had been censored on Chinese social media platforms. TechCrunch reported on how Arweave's permaweb was being used to preserve public health information that governments were attempting to suppress.

How It Works

When data is stored on Arweave, it becomes a permanent transaction on the blockweave. Here's what makes it censorship-resistant:

• No single point of control: Data is replicated across independent miners worldwide
• Economic incentives: Miners are paid to store and serve data through the protocol's storage endowment
• Immutable by design: Once confirmed, a transaction cannot be modified or deleted
• Permissionless access: Anyone can retrieve data through any Arweave gateway

Why It Matters

Free speech infrastructure cannot depend on the goodwill of corporations or the political stability of any single country. Arweave provides a neutral, permanent layer for preserving information that matters, regardless of who wants it suppressed.