Reporters Without Borders’ Uncensored Minecraft Library is Going to Fundamentally Undermine Government Censorship of the Press.

Minecraft - the best selling single video game of all time - may be at the forefront of a clever new method to deliver banned media to those behind oppressive government firewalls.

When Reporters Without Borders came up with the idea to build an uncensored Minecraft library, they opened up a new venue allowing citizens to see news which they otherwise would not have. On top of that, adding the ability for users to add to it themselves provides for a broad, open-sourced, uncensored news platform that foreign governments are going to find difficult to block.

It’s easy enough for regimes to block access to websites and apps, especially when those who administrate the aforementioned platforms are the ones pushing out the content which governments hostile to a free press may disapprove. It’s another story when it comes to blocking a platform like Minecraft, which already has 300 million accounts in China.

The Chinese government could theoretically ban Minecraft in the country, but the company itself, which is owned by Microsoft, isn’t creating or even promoting “The Unlicensed Library”. It is highly unlikely Microsoft would prevent a popular NGO, such as Reporters Without Borders, from developing and maintaining the downloadable world required to access the library.

Less populous countries with less pull in the business world have an even smaller chance of preventing their citizens access to the library. It doesn’t take much to download a map and servers can be run on personal PCs. The only way to truly prevent access to it is to limit access to the internet. We’ve seen internet shutoffs in the past, proving governments are willing to go to those extremes if they deem it necessary.

What remains to be seen though is how the library, and those who maintain it, respond to the misinformation which will likely arise within its pixelated halls. The library itself may end up being a window into a world iron-fisted governments don’t want you to see, but the content in it will need to be vetted. If contributors to The Unlicensed Library can do that, it’s going to become a powerful resource for those looking to maintain freedom of the press.

Friends

You can manage your friend list also through commands, you can see the list of available commands with /fr help

Social

We're also currently hosting a Giveaway on Instagram so be sure to not miss it: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9TvCsTqDZH/

Vote Parties

Various

• Fixed sand mechanics and slab blasting on Factions
• Added ender pearl support in creative mode on /creative
• Monthly meme contests on our Discord with coupon rewards

After a slightly minor delay here's for you the list of winners of the past BuildBattle with screens of the plots:

1st place - Zziu (/p v -76;-53)

2nd place - UnsiW (/p v -420;-697)

3rd place - BlueberryTechLUL (/p v 108;-97)

Starting from April build battles will start automatically the 1st of the month every 2 months (1st April, 1st June, 1st August etc) and they will last 2 weeks, you will know the theme from regular broadcasts that you will see in game and on Discord.
Also rewards will be a little bit better with higher value coupons and stuff, you'll see :shrug:

We decided to make Nitro Boosting on our Discord server (Click here) a little bit more worth it.

If you don't know what Nitro Boosting is read here: https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028038352-Server-Boosting-
If you don't want to read too much and want the super simplified version then here:

Nitro users can decide to "boost" discord servers, once a server reaches enough boosts it will unlock special perks for everyone (i.e. more emoji slots)

From now on you will receive daily and automatically 1 extra vote reward (vote keys + money, skulls on creative)
We might add more rewards in the future if people appreciate it

Not just that, you also get to unlock special commands and perks for our Discord bot:

• /wordswith - Shows a list of words starting with something (to cheat in #wordsgame)
• /namecheck - Check the status of a MC name (availability,premium, EC last login, etc)
• /namehistory - Shows the name history of someone on EC (also /nh)
• /registrationdate - Shows the registration date of someone (also /regdate)
• /tocolor - Display a color based on name or hex code (i.e. /tocolor chartreuse)
• /me - Just like the one in game display a colored text (use /Me with capital M if you're on desktop)
• /afk - Set an AFK status
• /yesorno - Display a yes or no gif (also /yon)
• /russianroulette - Play the russian roulette without actually dying irl
• /roll - Generate a random number
• /mcskin - Show the MC skin of someone
• /identitygenerator - Generate a new identity (also /disguise)
• /give - Just like the command in game but without actual items
• /factoftheday - Show the fact of the day (also /fotd)
• /eightball - Ask something to the omniscient bot (also /8ball)
• /avatar - Display the Discord avatar of someone
• /acronym - Generate a possible meaning for an acronym (i.e. /acronym nxds)
• Shorter cooldown for RP commands
• Special mentions
  • [mention] is a...
  • [mention] likes...
  • [mention] likes to...

There you have it a brand new build battle :ok_hand:

How

1. Get a plot on Creative (important: you can't use merged plots)
2. Build alone or with friends
3. Once you're done do /bb participate while standing on the plot

You have 2 weeks starting from now to submit.

Rewards

These are the prizes you will receive if you win:

1st - The last plot remaining next to the spawn, 1 pet of your choice, 2 titles
2nd - 1 pet of your choice, 1 title
3rd - 1 title

Yes, if you win you can gift your reward/rewards to someone else.
All the winners will be contacted and asked to join the builders team without application.

Theme

The theme this time will be: winter
You can build anything you like as long as it's winter themed, it's not a pixel art and it's not copied from somewhere/someone

Alright it's been 6 months and it's time to reset again.

This time things will be a little bit different, we based new changes on the community feedback so let's see how it goes, here's what changed:

• New F TOP and /f topinfo, F TOP would only count blocks placed in your faction claims and the longer spawners are placed the higher the value
• Added /f topinfo that would display the list above with block values OR it would display specific spawner points if player is looking at one
• Remove permanent sponge (they'll be like vanilla now)
  
• Chesthoppers can now be blown up 
• Per chunk spawner limit is now 120 (40 before)
• Weekly F TOP vouchers
• Fixed spawner watering mechanics
• Fixed ally/truce limits
  
• Fixed wall generators
• Removed Knockback from gear in crates

And that's about it, we'll monitor the new changes in the next few days and apply fixes or changes if needed, you can submit your feedback here

• Suggestions: https://www.extremecraft.net/suggestions/new/
• Bug reports: https://www.extremecraft.net/tickets/new/5/

Season Winners

Here's the list for this season winners: 

1. intermilan123 (Reality) - 100€
2. ItsAllen (VigVan) - 90€
3. AutoJan (Valhalla) - 80€
4. NikoV (Guardians) - 70€
5. Smidjuholl (Smidjuholl) - 60€

This took a bit longer than anticipated but here it is.
New and fresh revamp of the new website with a proper dark mode and a proper light mode.

Here's a list of the main changes and improvements you'll see:

Dark Mode

The dark mode is now actually dark and not bluish/purple anymore. Several color correction changes have been applied as well only for you so that you won't be blinded anymore while surfing our website in the obscurity of your basements.

Better Rules

We are now offering 2 kinds of rules. 
The over-simplified ones for lazy people who don't want to read here.
And the over-detailed ones for those who like to read here.

Discord Tutorial

As it turns out verifying on our Discord server for some is not as easy as one might expect so we made a tutorial specifically to help those people: click here

You might want to verify on Discord because doing so will give you access to all our chats and to Giveaways as well as Events.
Also because it's not very smart being in a server where you can't see any chat but you do you.

Public Suggestions

That's right, suggestions are now public for everyone to see and judge. You can upvote and downvote them so you can show others how much you hate them.

Notifications

The notifications will actually show you what is requiring your attention instead of just a number with no indication whatsoever of what you're supposed to answer to. You're welcome.

Fancy Staff Page

The staff page is not sad anymore, all the staff is organized in categories and there you can find all our Discord contacts if you want to add us to complain about something like everyone does.

New Homepage

The homepage will now immediately show you the latest news and all the important links so you don't have to deep dive into several menus to find them.

Points for bug reports

You will now be rewarded with points (that you can see here) for all the bugs you report, any kind of bug.
Only the very first reporter will be rewarded.

This change is NOT retroactive. This means that if you reported a bug before this post it will not be rewarded.
Each bug report will make you earn a different amount of points depending on the severity of the bug.

Giveaway Announcement

That's right, it's that time of the year again. This Saturday at around 8.00 PM (GMT+1) we'll host a new giveaway on our Discord.
You can win ranks, keys, titles, pets, a cat, coupons, a life and much more but not really!

Prerequisites to participate: 

1. You need to have a Discord account
2. You need to be verified on our Discord server

Yes it's finally here!

It's been awhile since we've last updated our website and as some of you already noticed issues started piling up (players were unable to login, etc).

Sadly forums have to go (for now) and we will use discord as our primary way to communicate with players. There were simply too many issues with them also less and less players kept using them.

We're thrilled to announce that with new website we will keep adding new features! That includes automated rewards for top players on leaderboards and staff members (including our secret AHT).

As always, if you find any bugs or errors please report them so that we can fix them :)

Another things to mention, and some of you already noticed that, we're in process of upgrading our servers to ensure best possible user experience after that we have planned massive ingame updates.

Oh... and if you missed it, we also have new logo ;)