A nonprofit used Minecraft to build an "Uncensored Library" of journalism that bypasses government censorship.

Encrypted networks allow users with internet access anywhere in the world to view blocked content and avoid surveillance when communicating evidence of abuse to independent journalists. The same networks can support democracies by helping activists coordinate protests on dark web forums.

Since 1999, this large, online, nonprofit archive has saved the stories of cancelled and unreleased video games. See prototypes, developer history, and assets for various computers and consoles of all ages, including gems like Cartoon Network's "Toon Jam!"

A Freedom House report found that AI-powered disinformation campaigns and censorship tactics are spreading, with 16 countries utilizing the technology to shape online narratives or suppress dissent, as of 2023. In Venezuela, deepfake software was used to push pro-government propaganda with fake news anchors.

Ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes at a popular social media company trying to keep users, businesses, and workers safe? Now you can try out your own ideas for moderation and management with this fun and informative game designed to...

When Carmen Sandiego swept onto the video game scene in 1985, the deluxe version of the game included historic photographs from National Geographic and music from the Smithsonian. Read this article to learn about the overlap between gaming and ancient architecture.

Accusations of censorship and bias have led social media companies like Meta and X to scale back or abandon moderation tools—just as foreign propaganda surges. Researchers say their ability to track manipulation online has become severely limited.

Journalist Ali Velshi analyzes the lasting appeal of Lois Lowry's "The Giver" and George Orwell's "1984," two dystopian novels that have courted controversy since their publications. Beyond his interpretations, though, Velshi wants to understand why school boards perennially ban these books—and what makes them so fascinating for adolescent readers. In his search, he talks to Lowry about the lasting influence of her novel and to Orwell expert James McCallister about the prescient political portrait in "1984."

Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons was a nonprofit dedicated to counteracting what it considered the "Witchcraft Suicide Violence" of the fantasy roleplaying game. It includes a list of recent teenage suicides, arguing that they all had "one common denominator: ALL WERE HEAVILY INVOLVED IN DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS."

The internet has changed a lot about how we learn, explore new ideas, and conduct research, particularly when it comes to the spaces we learn in. While few of us would trade our smartphones for a walk in a historical library, a walk through some of the beautifully designed cathedrals of learning could remind us to put them down sometimes. Explore 10 of the world's magnificent libraries with this quick video survey.

Libraries serve as far more than book repositories. This episode follows a family experiencing homelessness that spent months living in their local library, Iranian students reuniting with family across the US-Canada border because the library straddled both countries, and a Vermont man who built his own library to house unpublished manuscripts.

Various countries around the world, including China, Russia, and Iran, control their local DNS infrastructure, allowing them to block access to online content by preventing the internet "phone book" from finding the IP addresses for specific URLs. Government-controlled internet service providers can also cut off access entirely or throttle specific traffic.

Since its founding in 2003, the nonprofit has provided financial, legal, and infrastructure support to Wikipedia and its sister projects (e.g., Wikinews), primarily by managing donations, which average $11, from readers. Additional funding comes from gifts exceeding $1,000, the Wikimedia Endowment, and providing Wikipedia content for commercial use.

A computer expert who created a system to track down sources of revenge porn and an investigative journalist joined forces to investigate digital abuse. Their investigations focused on so-called clear nets, websites that make up the web most users surf. Then, they turned their investigation toward the dark web, where they found a child abuse website with more than 1 million registered users.

Browsing the dark web requires onion routing, which prevents visitors from being identified and the locations from which they connect from being traced. This has been useful to activists in environments affected by political oppression or instability. However, those unfamiliar with navigating the space may encounter malware and network attacks from denizen hackers.

From the abolition of slavery to South African apartheid, this podcast explores how censorship has historically been used to suppress racial justice movements—and to promote them—and asks whether free speech is a foundation for, or a threat to, equality.

Mosaic was a web browser that allowed people to more easily access webpages on the World Wide Web. But unlike previous browsers, Mosaic was a graphical browser, which means it displayed images alongside text. This helped turn the web from a place for scientists into a cultural location that captured people's attention.

Companies now make unilateral decisions once reserved for nation-states, such as controlling satellite internet access in active war zones and influencing global information flows. Lawmakers and the international order are struggling to keep up with technological developments, let alone regulate them.

The Black Vault is one of the largest privately run archives of declassified documents in the world. Explore UFO sightings, doorways on Mars, and more.

International Seabed Authority negotiators have spent over a decade drafting regulations that all countries would have to follow before collecting minerals from the seabed. Because deadlines to finalize these agreements have been missed, some entities have discussed unsanctioned mining, despite about three dozen ISA countries calling for a pause on activity and automakers and tech firms pledging they will not use seabed minerals.

The white sand acts as a projector screen and a topographic map image is projected on the surface. An XBOX Kinect is positioned to read the contours of the sand and draw new topographic lines according to how the sand is moved.

College student Minh Le designed the game through "modding," effectively building on the code of a preexisting game, the game "Half-Life" in his spare time.

While those using an anonymized web browser, such as Tor, have been able to access the social network's .onion site since 2014, the announcement marks a major milestone by the tech giant, which has worked to ensure its users can bypass restrictions by various governments and continue visiting the site.

The role-playing game became popular enough to attract the ire of special interest groups, like Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (or BADD) during the so-called "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s and 1990s, when parents believed the game was corrupting children.

A 2025 Pew Research survey found that the share of people worldwide who consider free speech and press freedom important has declined over the past several years, even though majorities in most countries still say these rights matter.

Rename.world is a playful, community-driven project where users discover, claim, and rename locations across a live global map. It's kind of like Wikipedia meets Google Maps, filtered through the internet's love of chaos and whimsy.

Founded in 1996, the Archive promotes open access and the digital preservation of online information and, as of 2026, contains more than 200 petabytes of content, including over one trillion web pages, 56 million books and texts, 13 million audio recordings, 1.3 million software programs, and other digital content.

In addition to being a massive asset to journalists and eager members of the public, FOIA has also shed light on some of the weirder corners of America’s functioning democracy. Here are 10 choice documents.

How many of us have played a video game with an archaeologist protagonist whose main idea of fieldwork involves spying, back flips, and destroying the historic sites they're meant to be preserving? Exactly.

Marble is a spatial AI system built by World Labs, a San Francisco startup focusing on world models (rather than large language models). Using a text prompt (or a single image or video), users can generate a "world" and move through it, edit it, or export it. The company and project are part of the broader spatial intelligence area of AI, where AI can simulate environments.

Inspired by the fantasy paperback explosion of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson published the original incarnation of the game, which immersed players in worlds similar to fantasy fiction. Since then, several newer editions have been released. In recent years, podcasts and livestreams featuring individuals playing the game have gained popularity.

Like Wikipedia, volunteers around the world contribute to Wikivoyage, Wikispecies, and Wikimedia Commons to create freely accessible repositories of knowledge. Other projects include Wikibooks, a collection of e-books and annotated texts; Wikisource, which features source documents and historical texts; and Wiktionary, a dictionary covering over 170 languages.

A 2016 survey of 38 countries found that the US scored highest in support for free expression, with 71% of Americans saying people should be able to say what they want without government censorship, more than in any other nation surveyed.

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more widely available, journalism must adapt and establish ethical norms for how the technology is used. This report from the Center for News, Technology & Innovation looks at the issue from every angle, including legal considerations, potential biases in datasets, and the speed at which AI capabilities are changing. It also includes links to recent studies on the use of AI in journalism.

Controversial changes made by Elon Musk to X have inspired an exodus from that platform and growth in Bluesky. The latter's open-source model gives users customizable feeds, portability between services, and a "billionaire-proof" design that prevents corporate takeover.

A Wall Street Journal strapped on a VR headset for a full day. Here's what happened when she went to work meetings, hung out with new avatar friends and attended shows — all in the metaverse.

The world phenomenon of Harry Potter inspired millions of kids to read. The books, and the make-believe game quidditch (played by the hero), have inspired a real-life sport called Quadball, based on the fictional game involving flying broomsticks. Teacher John Ssentamu brought the game to his town of Katwadde in Uganda to bring kids—long absent from school—back to receive an education. A documentary crew filmed them playing in an inspiring story of education and community.