You Won’t Expect This Video Game to Be Home to The World’s Largest Online Library

Censorship is a big deal in today’s world. With the continued popularity of the concept of decentralization, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for people to sit back and accept the control and censorship that characterized previous years. People are doing everything possible to be free, and a new class of freedom fighters has emerged in the Minecraft world.

Minecraft is a sandbox for play, but it has also somehow become the host of a grand digital library meant to combat censorship. The aim of The Uncensored Library is to bring banned information to those who need it most.

A Trojan Horse for the Truth

Even in the most censored countries, Minecraft is still largely freely available. Thanks to this, and the internal workings of Minecraft, it was easy to hide this grand collection of information in plain sight. 

Since it was almost impossible for a government to ban a game played by millions of children, Reporters Without Borders leveraged the World Day Against Cyber Censorship to launch The Uncensored Library. Minecraft has internal book-writing mechanics that make it possible to turn it into a library. 

A book’s data is stored within a game’s map. So, this makes it very difficult for any censorship body to know the exact location of the content they are not pleased with having publicly available. It becomes impossible to censor without shutting down the entire game, which would lead to public pushback. 

The Architecture of Advocacy

Using more than 12.5 million blocks, the work done by BlockWorks took over 250 hours of design. It’s one of the most incredible things ever built on the Minecraft ecosystem. The library is designed to be grand from the outset, mimicking the feel of a physical structure that cannot be easily ignored or discarded. 

Now, for the interior of the building, there are multiple wings. Each wing represents a country with censorship or the threat of it. Examples of these countries are Russia, Mexico, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia. There is also a central rotunda, which features a giant floor map of the world, designed to tell visitors that every story deserves to be told on the grandest of stages. 

It took courage and immense effort to build The Uncensored Library, and walking through its halls makes it easy to appreciate the ingenuity of the people behind it.

Voices from the Forbidden Zone

While The Uncensored Library is obviously grand, the most important parts of it are the books themselves. These are largely works of journalists who have been exiled, silenced, or even killed on the job. With this information converted into Minecraft books, younger people are able to read about their leaders and countries in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

For instance, anyone visiting the library can read the works of Jamal Khashoggi of Saudi Arabia or Nguyen Van Dai of Vietnam, in their original languages, as well as in English translation. It’s no secret that those in power always rewrite history to suit themselves. However, thanks to The Uncensored Library, the truth is protected. So, it doesn’t matter the effort put into erasing some books from the world; they would always remain safe and accessible within Minecraft. 

More Than Just a Map

It’s understandable that not everyone plays Minecraft. However, The Uncensored Library represents a new way for activism online. This is simply telling of the fact that even if all channels are blocked, the human spirit will never die, but will keep looking for new ways to preserve the truth. 

This digital infrastructure has proven to have an immense impact on the real world, and one doesn’t have to be an activist to get the map. It doesn’t matter which wing one is; it’s certain that there will be a book that grabs attention and never lets go.