Episode 29: The Uncensored Library (1/29/2021)

Hey y’all. Welcome to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I’m your host, Callie, and I don’t know anything about anything. Join me on my exploration of the world, and I’ll tell you everything you ever, and never, wanted to know, through the eyes of Gen Z.

Today’s episode: the importance of journalism and how people underestimate the role that social media and video games can play in larger social issues.

There’s a digital library created by an organization named Reporters without Borders. It’s called the Uncensored Library, and it’s full of thousands of articles that have been censored or banned in various countries, as well as comprehensive information on press protection in every single one of the 180 UN-recognized countries. The library holds memorials for journalists assassinated for their work or killed attempting to report on a dangerous story and is regularly maintained by a small team of people from many different countries. The goal of the library is to make censored works accessible in every country, including the ones where they have been banned. How do they bypass the censors? It’s simple: the entire library was created inside of the video game Minecraft.

You see, even in countries where the internet is heavily censored, Minecraft is still available and doesn’t exist under the control of a government – therefore, any information inside of it can’t be censored. In the game, you can type into books and set them up for anybody to read, which is exactly how the Uncensored Library carries its information. I took a tour today, and these are my thoughts. There are screenshots available on my website, www.fastfactsforgenz.wix.com/podcast. Seriously, this thing is worth looking at. Let’s jump to my first reaction when I logged onto the game.

Okay. Here we are. Whoa. So when you first spawn into the game, you can either teleport to the Uncensored Library, or you can run up a big flight of marble and stone steps… and up a second… and through a large stone tunnel, lit on the sides by warm yellow light. And when you come out of the tunnel, you see a giant fist in the air, holding a pen. I’m sure it’s a symbol of something. I’ll have to look it up later. But you’re in this lovely stone and marble courtyard in front of this monument. It looks unreal. And then, as you cross the courtyard, you start to see it.

What you see when you first enter the game

The tunnel up the stairs

The giant fist with a pen

The Uncensored Library

The Library. It renders in front of you, and you can’t see it all at once because it’s so big. I’ll take a screenshot of it you can see. It’s beautiful here… neatly trimmed hedges all along the outside. But I’ll stop stalling. The thing that makes this place incredible isn’t the architecture, isn’t the masterful building and programming that went into creating the outside, or what it looks like. The amazing part is what’s inside the building. So as much as I’d love to keep marveling at the art on the outside, what matters is the truth on the inside.

So you walk in, past windows 3 times as tall as you are, into the central dome of the library. Above you hang chandeliers, and you can’t even see the top of the dome; it’s so big. There are clouds inside the building. In front of me stands a podium.

“Welcome to the Uncensored Library from Reporters Without Borders. In many countries the internet is controlled by oppressive regimes. Media is censored and websites are blocked, but Minecraft is still accessible. We’re using this loophole to bypass internet censorship and make independent information available again. Journalists from different countries, despite having been banned, jailed, exiled, and even killed, now have a place to make their voices heard again. Their forbidden articles are republished within books inside this library to inform players around the world about the real political situation in their countries. Let us stand up for our right to information and let the world know that the truth can never be silenced.” – Reporters without Borders

The map. Countries color-coded by the World Press Freedom Index.

In front of me, inside the dome, on the ground, is a map. It’s a map of the world and each country is colored white, yellow, orange, red, or black, showing how free the press is in each country. Another book: it’s called the Press Freedom Index and it’s the ranking for each country in the world. R.S.F. World Press Freedom Index 2020. This is their press freedom ranking from 1 to 180. Number 1 is Norway, followed by Finland, Denmark, and Sweden. Those countries in northern Europe tend to be the highest on the World Happiness Index; they’re up on the lists in education. Whatever they’re doing, they seem to be doing right. The last country on the list of white or gray countries, which are the best, is Estonia. Beginning the yellow countries is Iceland. You wouldn’t think of Iceland as having many problems with the freedom of press, but I click on the country to read their book to see what has to say. It seems as though Iceland has a lot of legal protections for journalists and the press. However, recently, since 2012, it says “relations between politicians and the media have soured.” Much like they’ve done in the US. And that puts Iceland at number 15 on the Press Freedom Index.

I’m above the clouds now. When you click on a book, it teleports you to one of the flags hanging around the dome. There’s a flag for every country in the world. I fly back down to the book so I can read. Where was I? Iceland? Some interesting ones that are up on the list are Uruguay, Suriname, Samoa, and Namibia. These are not countries you might think of when you think of the most progressive, First World countries, but I think that our concepts of progressive First World countries is very, very misguided. After Cyprus and Lithuania comes Spain, and Ghana, and South Africa, then Slovenia and Slovakia, and then France, and then the United Kingdom comes in at 35. You have to go down to 45 before you get the United States. 45 out of 180. Only 3 spots up from being in the red. Let’s see what the United States has to say. This one I’ll read a little bit of.

“Press freedom in the United States continued to suffer during President Donald Trump’s third year in office. Arrests, physical assaults, public denigration, and harassment of journalists continued in 2019, though the numbers of journalists arrested and assaulted were slightly lower than the year prior. Much of the ire has come from President Trump and his associates in the federal government, who have demonstrated the United States is no longer a champion of press freedom at home or abroad. This dangerous anti-press sentiment has trickled down to local governments, institutions, and the American public. In March 2019, a leaked document revealed the US government was using a secret database tracking journalists, activists, and others whom border authorities believed should be stopped for questioning when crossing certain checkpoints along the US/Mexico border. A couple months later, the Justice Department charged WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange with 17 counts of the World War 1-era Espionage Act. If he’s convicted, this would set a dangerous precedent for journalists who publish classified US government information of public interest moving forward. Under President Trump, the White House has strategically replaced traditional forms of press access with those that limit the ability of journalists to ask questions of the administration. The last daily televised White House press briefing led by a press secretary took place in March 2019, and since then the federal government has made multiple attempts to deny specific journalists and news outlets access to other opportunities for press engagement.” – Reporters without Borders

Despite the one message in the Constitution about freedom of the press, the United States can’t claim itself to be a champion of press freedom when I had to defend journalism in my own Civics class when one of my classmates decided, in a group project, to say that journalism was a threat to democracy. Anti-media sentiment, which is a sentence I could barely say because it makes no sense, is as dangerous as it is real. Let me tell you more about how dangerous it is. Let’s skip the red section, as there are many, many countries in the red. We have to get to 158 to reach the black countries. The first one is Singapore, then Sudan, Burundi, Tajikistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Equatorial Guinea, Egypt, Yemen, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Laos, Iran, Syria, Vietnam, Djibouti, China, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, and 180 is North Korea. Many of my listeners are from the US, where we hear a lot about North Korea, and so I’m not going to click on number 180. I’m going to click on 179. Turkmenistan.

“Ever expanding ‘news-black hole’ Turkmenistan is one of the world’s most closed countries. The government controls all media and the few internet users are able to access only a highly censored version of the internet, often in internet cafes in which they must show ID before being able to go online. There’s only one internet access provider. However, this does not at all satisfy the president,” whose name I will not attempt to pronounce (Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow), “Who is also known as Father Protector. Harassment of the few journalists who work clandestinely for media outlets based abroad keeps on growing. In recent years, several of these journalists have been arrested, tortured, physically attacked, or otherwise forced to stop working, with the result that these media now tend to use the services of citizen journalists. On the pretext of making the cities more visually appealing, the authorities periodically revive a campaign of removing satellite dishes, thereby depriving the public of one of the few remaining ways to access uncontrolled news coverage. The broadcasting law provides, in theory, for the possibility of privately owned TV channels, but only on the condition that they promote a positive image of Turkmenistan.”

The problem in Turkmenistan is not unlike the problems in the other countries. It’s an obsession, a governmental obsession with control and with image. There’s a sort of irony in the policies of these governments that are so obsessed with controlling their reputation that that obsession with control, in itself, becomes their reputation. The government of Turkmenistan controls the internet, partially because they think that that’s what a government is supposed to do, and partially because they don’t want any criticism of the government getting out. They want “a positive image of Turkmenistan.” But when dedicated journalists see that this is happening, things like the Uncensored Library show up to tell the rest of the world what’s happening in the country. And that doesn’t do much good for their reputation. But as much as they seem to care about their reputation, they don’t. Because it is, at the end of the day, about control and very little else.

It would take me hours and hours to go through every single book in this library, even on every single country. In the center of the room there are several hallways. One on your left, one on your right, and one directly in front of you. I’m going to go forwards this time. There’s a flag on the wall. When you walk into this room, the first thing you see is the podium you’re looking for; it’s a giant black cage in the center of the room. I read the book. This is the room for Saudi Arabia, number 172 of 180 countries. There’s a description of the cage inside.

Saudi Arabia’s cage

“It’s representative of the fact that Saudi Arabia is amongst the top 3 countries with the most journalists imprisoned worldwide. Journalists and citizen journalists alike are imprisoned for their work in Saudi Arabia.”

The book says that this number has tripled since the start of 2017 and that many of these journalists are likely being subjected to torture. Saudi Arabia permits no independent media. The book continues talking about a specific journalist. He was an incredibly sharp critic of some of the policies of Saudi Arabia’s government and denounced the imprisonment of fellow journalists. And for that, on October 2, 2018, he was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate, which the Saudi Arabian government first denied, but later admitted. In this room inside the cage, you can read five of this man’s articles. The cage is made of one of the very few blocks in Minecraft that is nearly impossible to break without an extremely expensive tool. While I believe they used this block, this material, for just imagery purposes – it’s dark and shiny – I think that it’s significance within the game is very powerful. You can’t break out of the restrictions of press freedom easily. You need money and you need power to overcome the censorship. And if you don’t have money and you don’t have power, how do you break it? With patience, and hard work, and never, ever giving up.

I teleport back to the dome and walk down another hallway. I walk to the right this time. Mexico. The United States likes to demonise Mexico for all of its problems. Mexican people are almost the scapegoat for whatever we think is going wrong in this country. Lack of access to jobs: people say that immigrants are stealing them, when in reality it’s companies moving overseas and being able to criminally underpaid immigrant labor. It’s a lack of morals in the companies that are stealing your jobs, not the Mexican immigrants and Central and South American immigrants trying to make a living for their families.

The sign on the wall in the Mexico wing

I know all of this has been a little bit heavy, but the Mexico wing is one of the heaviest places in the library. Mexico is number 144 in the World Press Freedom Index. In the book, it says, “the Uncensored Library is honoring 12 killed Mexican journalists and their sacrifice for press freedom. Although not at war, Mexico is one of the world’s deadliest countries for journalists and even surpasses Syria. Collusion between officials and organized crime poses a grave threat to journalists’ safety and cripples the judicial system at all levels. Journalists who cover sensitive political stories or organized crime are warned, threatened, and often gunned down in cold blood. Others are abducted and never seen again.”

Inside the ring are memorials for each of the 12 journalists they honor. You can read some of the articles in English or Spanish. If I can, I’ll say their names. If not, I’ll try.

Jorge Celestino Ruiz Vazquez. Nevith Condes Jaramillo. Santiago Barroso. Rafael Manrua Manriquez. Telesforo Santiago Enriquez. Rogelio Barragan Perez. Miroslava Breach. Javier Valdez Cardenas. Norma Garabia Sarduza. Franciso Romero Diaz. Omar Ivan Camacho Mascareno. Jesus Eugenio Ramos Rodriguez.

Twelve Mexican journalists killed for their work, when free press is something that, theoretically, we all believe is a right.

I walk outside and look at the courtyard. This world seems to be in a perpetual sunset, giving everything a gentle glow. I walked back inside. We still have one more hallway to visit. As I walk there, I want to talk about social media, and I want to talk about video games. Social media is bad for a lot of reasons but it is also good. And all of the reasons it is good are ignored much of the time. It’s good because it provides connection and it’s good because it provides much faster communication, but it’s also good because it brings communities together in ways they could never happen. There are 4 or 5 other people in the library with me right now and we’ve spoken very little. We complimented each other’s usernames, we’ve given each other tips on how to navigate the library. But mostly we’re just here together. Sharing an experience even if we don’t talk to each other. When we run across each other, we wave, we bounce, we dance. Anything that says, “Hi. I’m here. You’re here. We’re here, together, in this place. And we want to. We want to be here. We want to be together in this place. And that’s what social media is, I think. Even if you’re on Twitter and you’re hate watching something – people you disagree with – you’re still there. You want to be there. If you don’t want to be there, why are you there? Humans long for community even if that community is rife with conflict and disagreement and hatred. At the end of the day, we’re all still together, and we’re choosing that. And we wave and we bounce and we dance.

I walk down the last hallway. There’s a labyrinth in this room. This is Vietnam. 176th out of 180 countries.

“The Labyrinth of Truth highlights Vietnam’s growing efforts to make it as hard as possible for its citizens to reach independent information. As Vietnam’s media all follow the cCmmunist Party’s orders, the only sources of independently recorded information are bloggers and citizen journalists, who are being subjected to ever harsher forms of persecution, including plainclothes police violence.”

The Vietnam Wing

I fly to the beginning of the Labyrinth of Truth. I want to try and walk through it. I want to feel the metaphor. It’s difficult to find truthful information in Vietnam. We think that it’s difficult to find truthful information here, and it is. Misinformation is extremely common and difficult to decipher from what is real, and what matters, and what is good. I’ve run into many dead ends in this labyrinth, and I’m imagining what it would be like to try and find any sort of credible information on the internet if this is what it’s like. Imagine clicking on website after website trying to track down evidence of what happened to your partner, a journalist, or your friend, or anyone. Try to track down what the government is doing, try to track down what policies mean. You can’t. It’s a maze. Every turn I take that I think is taking me closer actually seems to be taking me further away. It’s frustrating, and I believe it’s supposed to feel that way. At some point, if this was your life every single day, and you lived this confusion, you’d want to give up. You’d get frustrated.

When you look at the citizens in countries like this, you might think they’re complacent or they’re not fighting. But imagine trying to organize and fight for what you believe in when every piece of information is censored or surveilled. You couldn’t. You couldn’t organize. How? How? How would you organize? I’m completely lost. How would you do anything? Could you? Could you?

Eventually I let my frustration get to me. I fly. I try to look for a way in. There is one, I can see it. I can see the doorway. But to get into it… I don’t know… it’s almost like you can’t get through the maze at all. That’s their goal, isn’t it? That’s the government’s goal. Inside, at the end of the maze, there are podiums with books in English and in Vietnamese.

This time, I leave the library. I go out into the courtyards and I spend a while just flying.

Looking at the trees, looking at the fountains, and thinking.

Thinking about… thinking about my African American studies class. We talked today about recognizing our privilege in conversation and understanding that sometimes we might not know everything and we might need to take a seat and listen. When we talk about recognizing our privilege, I feel like the only times when the privilege of living in America comes up is when talking about food or hunger, but that isn’t true either. There’s so much food insecurity in America. So sometimes it seems difficult to recognize that we have privilege and it can also be a challenge even when looking at the Uncensored Library because the US is so far down on the Freedom Index. But there are 180 countries, and the U. S. is well within the top half. And there’s such a range of press protection that we need to recognize the privilege that we have in this country. To be able to say that media- that relations between the media and politics have soured, or that some news publications aren’t always reliable. We don’t have journalists being killed on the street by plainclothes police officers. For their journalism.

If this existed in real life it would be a World Wonder. Both for its architectural beauty but mostly for the information it holds. Video games are not what you think of when you think of organizing and social movements. In Minecraft you can create anything you want. And many people take that to mean a house, a refuge for them, a place to be safe. And some people create communities, and some people create revolutions. The Uncensored Library is a refuge, it’s a community, and I think that it is part of a press freedom revolution that needs to happen in every country. Including the US. The Uncensored Library is playing a very large role in a fight for change. It’s playing the role of information. Information is vital to any sort of change.

If you have Minecraft, visit the Uncensored Library. If you don’t, visit uncensoredlibrary.com A lot of the information stored in this Minecraft server is there on the internet for people who don’t play. If you have time, check it out. It’s wonderful.

Thank you for listening to Fast Facts for Gen Z. Follow me on Twitter @FastFactsPod to get updates on episode topics and release dates. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. This is Callie, signing off.

www.uncensoredlibrary.com

https://rsf.org/en

Server Address: visit.uncensoredlibrary.com