Nepal’s Discord Vote Might Be the Future of Protest – Foreign Policy

It’s a safe bet that absolutely no one had “Nepali citizens hold a meaningful state election on an online gaming server” on their 2025 bingo card. Yet after days of government-toppling protests earlier this month, the nomination, election, and swearing-in of Sushila Karki as Nepal’s new interim prime minister has, so far, gone off without a hitch. Is this a new era of synergy between politics and online activism? Possibly—though it might depend on what social media platform you’re using. Karki, a former chief justice of the Nepali Supreme Court and the country’s first female prime minister, was elected on the massively popular, semipublic chat platform Discord after hours of intense political debate between several popular candidates, much of it livestreamed to other platforms such as YouTube. Released in 2015, Discord is a glorified chatroom, designed for gamers but popular across geek corners of the internet. Anyone can create and run their own Discord server, which can be open to the public or invite-only. This community focus has paid off; the platform boasts more than 200 million monthly users, and nearly all of its $600 million annual revenue is user-generated. The civic advocacy group Hami Nepal set up the Discord
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