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The memory hole, as in the phrase "Going down the memory hole," refers to a mechanism for censorship in George Orwell's novel, 1984.

In the novel, the memory hole is a slot into which government officials deposit politically inconvenient documents and records to be destroyed. 1984's protagonist Winston Smith, who works in the Ministry of Truth, is routinely assigned the task of revising old newspaper articles in order to serve the propaganda interests of the government. For example, if the government had pledged that the chocolate ration would not fall below the current 30 grams per week, but in fact the ration is reduced to 20 grams per week, the historical record (e.g. an article from a back issue of the Times newspaper) is revised to contain an announcement that a reduction to 20 grams might soon prove necessary, or that the ration has in fact gone up to 20 grams from some lower number, in a deliberate example of doublethink. The original copies of the historical record are deposited into the memory hole. A document placed in the memory hole is supposedly transported to an incinerator from which "not even the ash remains".

The term now generally refers to the alteration or outright disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a web site or other archive. The term is the name of one website (The Memory Hole) which is notable for preserving web-publishable materials, which would be typically destroyed, altered, or simply forgotten if left to the discretion of official publishing.