Nepal's Socialist Government Banned Social Media, So Activists Plotted a Revolution—on Discord.
The country's transition leader was selected not at the ballot box but on a 100,000-person Discord chat.
They marched to defend free speech online and ended up reshaping a nation. In September 2025, young protesters opposing Nepal's social media ban triggered a political upheaval that brought Sushila Karki to power as the country's first woman prime minister—with much of the organizing happening on the messaging platform Discord.
When the government collapsed, the Nepali military took charge and appointed Karki as transitional leader. Rather than a true "election," activists held a rushed Discord chat to discuss whom to suggest to the army as leader. Nepalese youth have been organizing quickly to ensure the revolution isn't hijacked by elements of the old political class who are still in power.
The revolution has been a crash course in "political literacy," says Samana Lawati*, a member of the Indigenous Gen-Z Collective, one of the organizations founded to represent the revolutionary youth. "A lot of people were saying that they didn't understand what a referendum is, what an ordinance is, what constitutional values are, and now these young people are trying to learn," she says. "Our generation is doing a lot, and I'm really proud."
The nation transitioned from a monarchy to a republic in 2008, but that revolution did not fulfill its promises. Nepal is consistently one of the poorest countries in Asia—hundreds of thousands go abroad to find work every year—and its ruling socialist parties have a reputation for corruption.
In summer 2025, the hashtag #nepokids (a reference to nepotism) spread on social media, criticizing the lavish lifestyle of politicians' families. When the government tried to ban several foreign social media platforms for ostensibly failing to follow new regulations, many critics thought the regulations were just a pretext to stop the spread of #nepokids content.
Protests against the social media ban broke out in Kathmandu on September 8. The protesters were neither expecting nor prepared to overthrow the government. Then authorities shot protesters with live ammunition. "Nobody expected the level of violence instigated by the state," says Lawati, who was at the protests. She recalls a peaceful atmosphere, with young schoolchildren in their uniforms joining the protests, and "could not comprehend" why she suddenly heard gunfire. "Even if there is shooting happening, it must be some kind of rubber bullets," Lawati recalls thinking at the time. "But it was not."
At least 19 people were killed on that first day. Enraged protesters stormed government buildings and politicians' houses. Zak Aldridge, a former classmate of mine who moved to Kathmandu to pursue the Buddhist path, was traveling through a small border town when the revolution broke out. "I'm up in this hotel thinking, this feels like a bad day to be in the big house," Aldridge recalls, as he soon learned that the hotel was owned by a member of Parliament and that several politicians were staying there. "I open up the blinds, and there's 100 guys across the street shouting."
Aldridge slipped out and greeted the protesters. "You know, they actually apologized to me," he says. They told him, "We're sorry, it's not about you. It's about us and our corrupt government today, and we're sorry you got caught in the crossfire," adding: "If you know anyone else still in the hotel, please tell them to get out because we're going to burn it tonight." They didn't follow through on that threat.
By the second day, former Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigned and the army took charge. Karki, a former Supreme Court chief justice who had come out early in support of the protests, met with the military after a 100,000-person Discord chat coalesced around her as a leader.
There are questions, of course, about the representativeness of that process. "The streets spoke louder than Discord. Gen Z movement was all of us, not a brand," social media user Suryasiva Kumar commented on a Reddit thread complaining about various organizers' self-promotion.
Nevertheless, Karki will lead a transitional government until the next elections, scheduled for March 2026, which will be the real test of the revolution. "This is a generation of various groups. All of us might not have the same political ideology," Lawati says. "This interim government needs to be solid, so that we can have a just and fair election."
*CORRECTION: This article initially misspelled Lawati's name.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Discord Revolution in the Himalayas."
