Discord in Nepal

Late last month, the government of Nepal issued an ultimatum to major foreign-owned social media platforms: comply with registration requirements in the country within a week, or wind up banned. (Nepal’s Supreme Court had recently ordered something similar.) When the deadline passed, TikTok and the messaging app Viber were reportedly in compliance, but more than two dozen other sites weren’t, and were duly blocked; the list included not only the usual suspects in this type of discussion—Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, X—but Reddit, Discord, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn. “We requested them to enlist with us five times,” a government spokesperson said, of the platforms. “What to do when they don’t listen to us?” Many social media users, predictably, were furious. Per the New York Times, some posted their addresses and hailed a new “age of letter exchange.”

Prior to 2008, Nepal had a restrictive environment for speech under a ruling monarchy, but then—following a period of strife that featured a Maoist insurgency, a crown prince massacring much of the royal family with an AK-47, and, eventually, decisive protests—the monarchy was abolished and a new constitution established a republic and guaranteed various freedoms; last year, the Times referred to Nepal as “South Asia’s model for free speech,” in an increasingly censorial neighborhood. By that point, however, this claim was under threat. In 2023, the government moved to ban TikTok, accusing the app of spreading hateful content that undermined social harmony. (One point of contention was tension between different religious communities over the slaughter of cows, which are sacred to many Hindus.) Last August, the ban was lifted after TikTok agreed to certain regulatory conditions, but this looked like a geopolitical maneuver (TikTok is Chinese-owned, and Nepal’s new prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli, was perceived as wanting to align with that country in its dispute with India) more than one of principle. Press freedom has recently taken a hit, too: the Committee to Protect Journalists, which closely monitors violations thereof worldwide, registered no updates for Nepal between 2020 and the beginning of last year, but has since raised the alarm about assaults and arrests, including the detention, last spring, of Kailash Sirohiya, the chair of the Kantipur Media Group, Nepal’s largest media conglomerate. (It was in an article about this incident that the Times called into question Nepal’s status as a free-speech model, noting that Sirohiya’s arrest appeared to be a “thinly veiled act of retaliation” on the part of a minister who had been investigated by Kantipur titles.) Recently, CPJ condemned the social media ban, calling it “a dangerous precedent.”