After 30+ Deaths In Protests Triggered by Nepal’s Social Media Ban, 145,000 People Debate The Country’s Future In Discord Chatroom
from the taming-chaos-with-discord dept
The Himalayan nation of Nepal has featured only rarely on Techdirt. The first time was back in 2003, with a story about an early Internet user there. According to the post, he would spend five hours walking down the mountain to the main road, and then another four hours on a bus to get to the nearest town that had an Internet connection he could use. As a recent Ctrl-Alt-Speech podcast explained, Nepal’s digital society has moved on a long way since then, with massive street protests in the country’s capital, Kathmandu, triggered by a government order banning 26 social media platforms, later rescinded. Those protests turned violent, leaving more than 30 people killed in clashes with the police, key government buildings in flames, and the prime minister ousted. Although the attempt to block the main social media platforms for their failure to submit to governmental registration — and thus control — may have been the final spark that ignited the violence, the underlying causes lie deeper, as NPR explains:
Frustrations have been mounting among young people in Nepal over the country’s unemployment and wealth gap. According to the Nepal Living Standard Survey 2022-23, published by the government, the country’s unemployment rate was 12.6%.
Leading up to the protests, the hashtag #NepoBaby had been trending in the country, largely to criticize the extravagant lifestyles of local politicians’ children and call out corruption, NPR previously reported.
The use of popular digital platforms to criticize the government in this way was probably a key reason for the authorities’ botched clampdown on social media, which in turn led to the large-scale protests and ensuing chaos. And now another popular digital platform is being used in an attempt to find a way to move forward:
After the government’s collapse on Tuesday, the military imposed a curfew across the capital, Kathmandu, and restricted large gatherings. With the country in political limbo and no obvious next leader in place, Nepalis have taken to Discord, a platform popularized by video gamers, to enact the digital version of a national convention.
As one person participating in the discussions told the New York Times: “The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord.” It is a parliament like no other: in just a few days, more than 145,000 people have joined a Discord server to discuss who should lead the country, at least for the moment:
The channel’s organizers are members of Hami Nepal, a civic organization, and many of those participating in the chat are the so-called Gen-Z activists who led this week’s protests. But since the prime minister’s abrupt resignation on Tuesday, power in Nepal effectively resides with the military. The army’s chiefs, who most likely will decide who next leads the country, have met with the channel’s organizers and asked them to put forth a potential nominee for interim leader.
Whether this unprecedented experiment in large-scale digital politics succeeds in bringing order and stability to Nepal remains to be seen. But it is certainly extraordinary to watch history being made as, once more, the online world rapidly and profoundly reshapes the offline world.
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Filed Under: ban, corruption, gen z, hami nepal, kathmandu, military, nepal, nepobaby, npr, parliament, protests, registration, social media
Companies: discord, new york times
Comments on “After 30+ Deaths In Protests Triggered by Nepal’s Social Media Ban, 145,000 People Debate The Country’s Future In Discord Chatroom”
Neat, but if the military has to “allow” you to run the country I’d be really skeptical about how much power someone in that role would actually have. I could be totally wrong though. Maybe the military will effectively hand over the keys and do whatever the potential new government bids, but it would be a shocking first. The real test is going to come when the new government decides to change some heads at the top of the military.
Re:
That’s what happens when devolution of power lands with the last institution standing – the military. They had an interim PM for a minute,but Parliament was dissolved. The military is popular also, largely returned some peace to the streets (especially by removing police), and is actively seeking nominations from the protest crowd. They did not take orders from the corrupt.
Absolutely not the worst military caretaking ever.
Vietnam is raising its collective eyebrows, for at least two mutually exclusive collective reasons.