Domain acquisition ends Apple Daily’s status as democratic news site

Hong Kong’s iconic building’s final printing Apple Daily Newspaper published on June 24, 2021.

along with Apple Daily Founder and publisher Jimmy Lai and other executives were detained, the assets of the media group were frozen, and the newspaper Jimmy Lai founded in 1995 came to a standstill.

However, while the tabloid, known for its pro-democracy stance, has ended, its sphere remains and is used to publish a very different kind of content.

The domain name was one of several purchased by Serbian businessman Nebojsa Vujinovic.

Vujinovic works in digital markets. His model: Buy expired Internet domain names and try to capitalize on their reputation using the latest technology and marketing techniques.

Vujinovic told VOA he was not trying to fundamentally change the content of the sites he purchased.However, with Apple Dailyhe made these changes because he was not interested in politics, especially for business purposes.

“It’s a big site, but we didn’t even think of continuing where the previous owner left off. There was no way we could do that,” Vujinovich said.

The owner – Jimmy Lai – has been charged under Hong Kong’s national security law and is currently on trial. The 76-year-old denies charges of colluding with foreign powers and inciting rebellion.

In that trial, prosecutors cited Apple Daily content as evidence against Lai.

Not politics and Hong Kong reporting, Apple Daily Now covering lifestyle, technology and birthday greeting ideas.

“Foreigners told me that (Lai) was reportedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and I wrote New Year and birthday wishes on his website, and they asked me, ‘Where are my morals?'” Vujinovich said.Website name Apple Daily, we can also write about Apple if we want. You cannot rename a domain name. “

Vujinovich said he has no interest in politics. As a child, he had to flee the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and moved to Serbia in the 1990s.

“I left my city when the war broke out and my childhood was ruined because of the war and politics. The only thing I absolutely don’t need in my life is politics,” he told VOA.

His change is Apple Daily To the dismay of journalists and media advocates.

Apple Daily It is renowned for its articles critical of the Chinese authorities and Hong Kong politics.

Critics view Jimmy Lai’s imprisonment as a sign of the deterioration of Hong Kong’s media environment. Jimmy Lai is one of four jailed Chinese dissidents nominated by two U.S. lawmakers for the Nobel Peace Prize in January.

“This is certainly an interesting development,” Singapore-based journalist Timothy McLaughlin said, adding that Bujinovic’s motivation appeared to be “opportunistic to make money.”

McLaughlin writes for The Atlantic and is co-author of the book, Among the Brave: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracyon human rights and media freedom.

People may still be looking for Apple Daily McLaughlin said the closure of news sites has left a void in the media market.

“The newspaper’s op-eds targeting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement have disappeared. But I think it’s also important to remember that regular reporting Apple Daily What was done was also gone,” McLaughlin said. “The day-to-day coverage of urban issues, what politicians were doing and the watchdog role that newspapers played. “

Vujinovic, a former DJ, has purchased approximately 2,000 websites since starting his digital marketing business. He said more than a million domain name licenses expire every day, even for well-known websites.

“There can be many reasons why a domain name may expire. A domain name owner may be careless and forget to renew a domain name registration on time or miss notifications about an expired registration,” he said.

Vujinovic and his team of about 60 people use artificial intelligence tools to deliver content to the site. They generate 100 to 200 text articles per day, most of which are in English.

“Artificial intelligence is getting better and better. It dominates the Internet information world, but we are not going to let machines generate content on their own,” Vujinovich said.

But the practice has raised concerns among media ethics experts. Watchdog NewsGuard recently warned of a sharp increase in websites that look like news outlets.

NewsGuard has logged more than 700 websites since it began tracking them, with much of the content generated by artificial intelligence.

Kirk O. Hansen, a professor of applied ethics at the University of California, Santa Clara, said the use of artificial intelligence could make the problem of fake news and misrepresentation worse.

“AI can spread information faster because it can create millions of messages in a short time and can imitate others more reliably,” Hansen said. “Hence the challenge of distinguishing good information from bad information, true from false information In the age of artificial intelligence, this is much more difficult.”

Hansen sees three major ethical challenges facing the digital world: employment, platform abuse and artificial intelligence.

Hansen asked: “How to control the ability of artificial intelligence to control, to generate new false knowledge and to imitate political actors, business actors.”

Journalist McLaughlin said the fight for media freedom over the past decade has largely taken place in cyberspace. Some governments, he said, “use a variety of tactics, from forcing media outlets to shut down, to opening their own fake websites, to buying some well-known domain names and then corrupting them.”

“This is something we see all the time in Southeast Asia. Newspapers are taken over by forces that are allied with or close to the government. Then they take the name and start publishing distorted or biased news,” McLaughlin said.

He added that social media platforms pose another challenge with manipulated content, saying: “I think a lot of the problems are happening online and bad actors can take advantage of them.”

Many media commentators agree that the best antidote to these challenges is improved news literacy so audiences know how to access verified, independent news.

This article is from VOA Serbian. Stefan Miljus contributed to this report from Belgrade.