The messaging platform Discord is used for many purposes: It can be a home base for a remote role-playing game, the meeting place for an old friend group, and now, the ballot for a national election.
On September 12, Sushila Karki — a former justice for Nepal’s Supreme Court — became the first world leader elected via a Discord server. Karki took over as Nepal’s interim PM after a period of chaos in the Himalayan nation. After at least 22 protesters died during clashes with police, a movement led by Gen Z overthrew the sitting PM and agreed on Karki as a temporary replacement.
That consensus came after several candidates debated one another in front of more than 10,000 observers on Discord. Karki was the clear favorite in an ensuing vote that will go down as the most famous Discord poll of all time (so far).
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Amid a tumultuous moment for Nepal’s 31 million citizens, the Discord election may seem like a curiosity, but it reflects some of the actions that intensified the ongoing uprising. The deposed government looked to curb the protests by banning the social media platforms that were being used as organizing tools, but that restriction failed to achieve its goal. Protesters weren’t cowed by the bans; they simply fired up their VPNs and moved over to a platform that is known to be cost-effective and easy to use.
If other governments are savvy, they will pay attention to the machinations of Nepalese youth. Restrictions on social media use have become a common strategy for administrations that are looking to quell unrest. (A blackout in Turkey offers a recent example.) The Discord election shows that Gen Z dissidents will not be slowed down by those measures. Their ability to find new means of access to banned platforms moves too fast to be stopped by federal decree.
Let’s bring this back to the United States. President Trump claims to have closed a deal that will avert a previous ban enacted during the Biden administration, but that agreement will seemingly come with some changes to TikTok. By looking to shepherd TikTok’s U.S. user data under the watchful eye of a steward like Oracle, Trump could keep the lights on at TikTok’s U.S. offices, but if the app’s young users decide that they prefer the old experience, they will find a way to restore it.
Keep in mind that the original TikTok ban materialized due to political pressure. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), one of the original architects of the bill, explained that many lawmakers chose to support it to slow the rise of pro-Palestine, anti-Israel rhetoric of the app.
As we can see from the Nepal situation, policing the topics Gen Z talks about on social media will not change the conversation. If anything, it only makes the voices grow louder.
