by Andrew Carmichael

Censorship is a big deal happening in oppressive countries around the world, with several different forms of media being unavailable to the public and made illegal to possess or even read. Even if some of the material is legal to possess, there are major censorships done to it by the government that makes it different from the other non-censored material. They do all of this to have more control over the general public by limiting what the citizens can view.

People from these countries have to use different ways to get through this problem and some even start various organizations to do so. One organization is Reporters Without Borders, an international non-profit and non-government organization that values and promotes access to freedom of expression and information to countries that are being censored. They have always had the mission of freedom of information in the face of danger of imprisonment or death. Founded in 1985, they have been tirelessly giving information to these countries, but with technology advancing, there have been ways to both find censored information in these countries and also have new restrictions be instituted. They have found ways to deliver censored information to bypass their restrictions, with one of the most interesting ways in recent years being through the video game Minecraft.

While this may seem silly, it is actually a brilliant idea because Minecraft is not restricted by most countries and people can make and share their Minecraft worlds online, with some being openly accessible by the public on multiple servers for others to see. Reporters Without Boarders, alongside Minecraft map makers, created a massive information hub full of banned materials in multiple different languages called The Uncensored Library.

Originally released on March 12, 2020, and updated as of 2023, The Uncensored Library was created to bypass the restrictive and oppressive governments that block, censor and monitor what people can read. With a massive map that contains blocked or illegal literary material about news journalism throughout the world from ten countries such as Russia, Vietnam, Egypt and Iran that can be read without censorship through the game. With a massive map, the player can explore and learn from what has been banned in their country. While there is a server for each country, there is also a map people can download and play by themselves.

While this can benefit a majority of people, this is primarily used to send a message to the younger generation so that they can learn from content that has been made illegal. It was created in a popular game so that it makes the information easily accessible.

You can find more information about The Uncensored Library and a link to the map at https://www.uncensoredlibrary.com/en. You can also find more material about the Reporters Without Boarders at their website https://rsf.org/en where you can find news articles about censorship that happens around the world.