person dressed as Minecraft character playing it on PC
Sarah Biren
Sarah Biren
March 6, 2023 ·  4 min read

Minecraft players built a massive library for censored news

Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history. It sold over 238 million copies and has millions of active players. The game features a blocky, three-dimensional world with seemingly indefinite terrain where players can discover materials and build structures, machines, and other items. Different game modes offer competition or cooperation with other players. There’s survival mode and creative mode, where players are free to explore the world. But Minecraft’s potential has expanded beyond the game. It’s being used to escape censorship. 

Minecraft’s Impact in Real Life

Minecraft is now being used to impact the real world. In September 2012, Minecraft’s company, Mojang Studios, partnered with UN-Habitat to create real-life environments in the game. This allowed young players who lived in those places to design changes they’d like to see in their own neighborhoods. This also allowed people to create urban planning ideas even if they had no architectural training. In 2014, the British Museum announced its plans to use Minecraft to recreate its exhibits. Microsoft and the non-profit Code.org worked to create activities and tutorials to teach children how to program. By 2018, over 85 million kids had studied these tutorials. [1]

Image Credit: The Uncensored Library

It’s also used in education. An organization called MinecraftEdu worked with the studio to create an affordable and accessible version for teachers to monitor their student’s work. It included many activities to teach subjects like science, history, language, farming, architecture, and engineering. For instance, teachers used it to create a model of an animal cell for the students to explore, while another built a world of historical landmarks for the students to walk around and learn about. [2]

But Reporters Without Borders saw a new potential in Minecraft. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and many news sites, Minecraft was not blocked in countries with strict censorship, such as China. Criticisms about the government are quick to be deleted, and the critics could end up in prison. So Reporters Without Borders uses the game to share reports from journalists in censored countries. 

The Uncensored Library 

They have created the Uncensored Library in the game world, a massive building made from over 12.5 million virtual blocks. Inside, the articles appear in book form. “We were able to build and craft a huge library, which took a couple of months with multiple developers to build,” says Robert-Jan Blonk, a senior interactive producer at MediaMonks, the digital production company that partnered with BlockWorks, the agency that designed the library. “Inside, you can find articles and information about the journalists that are being censored in their own countries. We share these stories through the books that live in that library, and people can just openly read them, because even in the countries. . . where these journalists are from, you’re able to play Minecraft.” [3]

Players can download the Uncensored Library game and map and walk into the virtual library, go to different sections and read whatever article they want. These contributions include articles from Mada Masr, an Egyptian news site that spoke out against corruption. In 2017, the site became blocked in Egypt, where most media is under governmental control. It also contains reports from grani.ru, a blocked Russian site that wrote about the protests and activism when Russia was trying to attain mass surveillance. 

Image Credit: The Uncensored Library

Fighting Censorship

The works of censored journalists now appear in the library, namely from the murdered Mexican journalist Javier Valdez and the exiled Vietnamese journalist Nguyen Van Dai. Additionally, journalist Hatice Cengiz managed to republish the work of her fiancée, Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was executed. The content itself cannot be edited but players can add more articles. If agents try to hack the server hosting the game, other hosts and servers can take charge and protect it. “With so many people playing the game, there’s always a version live, so they cannot take it down,” says Blonk.

The team hopes that more people playing Minecraft will find the library and spread awareness about the struggles of press freedom all over the world, as well as the horrible treatment of censored journalists who spoke out. “This is such a unique way of bringing attention to censorship,” Blonk says. “We hope that with so many players and so many people that we basically bring this problem up again. People die because they’re being censored.[4]

Keep Reading: Teletubbies Scene Was So Creepy That The Episode Was Banned In 1999

Sources

  1. The Minecraft Generation.” NY Times. Clive Thompson. April 14, 2016
  2. “Minecraft Education Edition: why it’s important for every fan of the game.The Guardian. Keith Stuart. January 22 2016.
  3. “This beautiful library in ‘Minecraft’ lets people access the work of censored journalists from anywhere.” Fast Company. Adele Peters. March 12, 2020
  4. “This Virtual Library in Minecraft Gives a Voice to Censored Journalists.” Futurism. Natalie Coleman. March 14, 2020