An attempt to ban social media in Nepal ended this week in violent protest with the prime minister ousted, the Parliament in flames and soldiers on the streets of the capital. Now, the very technology the government tried to outlaw is being harnessed to help select the country’s next leader, as more than 100,000 citizens are meeting regularly in a virtual chat room to debate the country’s future.
More than 30 people were killed in clashes with the police during youth-led protests that convulsed the capital in a paroxysm of outrage over wealth inequality, corruption and plans to ban some social media platforms.
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.
“The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord,” said Sid Ghimiri, 23, a content creator from Kathmandu, describing how the site has become the center of the nation’s political decision making.
The conversation inside the Discord channel, taking place in a combination of voice, video, and text chats, is so consequential that it is being discussed on national television and live streamed on news sites.
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.
Among the names being discussed in the channel were Sagar Dhakal, a onetime political candidate, and Kul Man Ghising, the former director of Nepal’s electricity authority. The two men participated in an hourslong meeting in the chat room on Wednesday, according to three people familiar with the call.
By the end of Wednesday, they said, after lengthy discussions and several polls, the Discord group had coalesced around Sushila Karki, Nepal’s former chief justice, and proposed her name for in-person meetings with the country’s army.
And on Thursday Ms. Karki met with Nepal’s president, Ram Chandra Poudel, and Army chief, Gen. Ashok Raj Sigdel, according to the Discord channel organizers. Ms. Karki’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
“The point was to simulate a kind of mini-election,” said Shaswot Lamichhane, a channel moderator who helped establish the server and has represented the group in meetings with the military. Mr. Lamichhane graduated from high school a few months ago.
The Discord group, he said, did not represent the whole country, and its goal was only to suggest an interim leader who could oversee elections.
In just four days, the server has grown to more that 145,000 members. And users are quickly discovering both the limits of democracy and of a social media platform in which everyone gets a say.
“It happened so quickly,” said Samdip Yadav, 23, a recent college graduate in Kathmandu, who joined parts of Wednesday’s forum. “We do not have definite leaders to represent us,” he added, calling the channel’s discussions “very disorganized,” which at times felt like a “random social media call.”
The chat history of the server is a reflection of that disorder and infighting. Anyone can join the channel, making it easily infiltrated by trolls or people from outside Nepal. Moderators have had to tamp down calls for violence. And because anyone can speak up, conversation are often a garbled mess of unidentifiable voices.
The organizers have had to choose between supporting a freewheeling discussion and quickly agreeing on a representative to meet with the army. The Gen Z group is competing with groups outside the Discord server that are also jockeying for influence.
“Please decide on a representative right now — WE DO NOT HAVE TIME,” the moderators told the channel on Wednesday before settling on Ms. Karki.
Among those also in talks with the military are representatives of some Nepali political parties and supporters of the former monarchy.
Steven Feldstein, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the role of technology in social movements, said the use of Discord at such a scale sounds “pretty unprecedented,” particularly if being used to plan Nepal’s political future.
But the general trajectory of Nepal, Mr. Feldstein said, fits into a broader global pattern. While social media is highly effective at “phase one” of movements — turning people out to protests — it has been less successful in creating “a stable political structure in the long term.”
Mr. Lamichhane, the recent high school graduate, did not expect the Discord server that his team started to become so central to the country’s national dialogue.
“You could say the Discord server is negotiating with the army, because all the things that are said is ultimately reaching the army headquarters,” Mr. Lamichhane said. “We are the people on the ground.”
Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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