Discord in Protest: How the affordances of Discord impacted the Nepalese September 2025 Anti-Corruption Movement

The September 2025 youth campaigned Gen-Z protests changed the political landscape in Nepal- a country frustrated with the perceived government corruption, economic crisis and wealth disparity. Through organisational and political tactics implemented primarily through Discord, activists were able to disempower a kleptocracy, with activism taking place both on the ground and online. In my essay, I explore how the impacts of the affordances and limitations of the popular social and gaming platform Discord played a role in this uprising. I will be primarily looking at Zeynep Tufekci’s book Twitter and Teargas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, an analysis of how social media interacts with the modern protest. Similarly, Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet by Linda Herrera has been used in this essay to compare the 2011 and 2013 Egyptian Revolution (also known as the Arab spring) in Tahrir Square differs and is similar to the aforementioned uprising in Nepal. Finally, I will be using article The 2025 Gen-Z Uprising in Nepal: A Three-Part Analysis by Sumina Suwal as a referential and foundational source for my essay, providing me with the framework for my analysis of the impact Discord has had on the 2025 revolt in Nepal. It must be prefaced that the use of the term ‘Gen-Z Protest’ captures the youth pioneered motivations behind the revolt, the term was first coined on social media platforms such as Tiktok and Instagram- however demonstrators were all ages and backgrounds.

Faced with an increasingly authoritarian government, a lack of economic opportunities, and a long history of political unrest, an overwhelmingly youth driven anti establishment movement was underway in Nepal. Users were taking to social media - particularly to Instagram and Tiktok, where they popularised the hashtag #NepoKid (’nepo’ is a shortened version of the word nepotism)- to underline the disparity felt in their communities, and were demanding justice and equality, fairer and better opportunities for work and education. On September 4th 2025 these posts seemed to cease across social platforms- Government officials had shut down 26 social media sites, including Facebook, X, Youtube and LinkedIn, for failing to comply with their registration requirements. With the means for online expression and community discussion removed, activists turned to new channels, most notably the popular social and gaming platform, Discord. Momentum for a wider anti-establishment movement quickly materialised, and discussion, organisation and planning for a full-scale upheaval took place. On September 8th, 30,000 demonstrators arrived outside the Parliament of Nepal, three times the expected amount. By midday, protestors had passed over the barricades and the first flames began to rise behind the parliament gates. Heeding instructions from government officials, police deployed tear gas and opened fire. This did not disarm protesters. In the days that followed, a myriad of government officials resigned, including Prime Minister Oli and Home Minister Ramesh Lal Lekhak, their offices and residences torched, a number of courts set ablaze and prisons broken into. Protestors paraded through the streets ironically dressed in police uniforms, carrying the Nepalese flag and celebrating- however not without casualties. By the end of the first day 19 had been killed, many still wearing their school uniforms. According to the Kathmandu Post, ‘Police logs revealed that 13,182 rounds of ammunition had been fired over the two days- 2,642 live bullets, 1,884 rubber rounds, and 6,279 tear-gas shells’.

According to Discord group moderator and organiser Shaswot Lamichhane ‘online activity can give a misleading sense of scale. A very active server does not always reflect what is happening on the ground’. This communication platform gives way for rapid transmission- designed for social gaming, users can send live updates and quickly organise tasks under different channels. In the context of the Gen-Z uprising this included logistics, updates, debates and volunteer coordination. This provided activists with the communication they needed to quickly station themselves at the required location. Users could refer to the platform while they awaited news or instruction, which was updated in real time. The mass messaging signals a larger network of discontent and can display- whether or not this is truly accurate- a broader network of support then what may be reflected offline, which may probe a politically minded online member to take physical action, feeling supported within a large likeminded community. Zeynep Tufecki writes that ‘movement outputs that look like increases in capacity mask weaknesses that have been introduced’. This can be equally as dangerous as it is important. While excellent for fast deployment and widespread signalling, it is hard to gauge a sense of scale- a message may have a rapid response on the platform, but accurate numbers and location of members is hard to determine. Necessary details or news can be lost under a slew of messages. This suggests that Discord is efficient at large scale organisation, but fails to provide the necessary communication for smaller scale distribution and detailed information.

The chronological nature of Discord allows users to have more certainty and validity when it came to updates or the development of events. When referring to messages, users had access to information such as the original poster and the time at which the message was posted, allowing activists to have a clearer understanding of ongoing progress. Contradiction is harder to foster as users were able to directly refer to and keep record of old messages, leading to a higher level of collective trust between community members. Algorithmic platforms- such as X or Facebook- would not have been able to foster the same sense of credibility. Tufecki writes that algorithms ‘sift through content and decide what to surface, prioritise, and publicise and what to bury’- each individuals feed is organised differently, with the order and nature of content shown possibly provoking an entirely different emotional response from the next. Information is centralised on platforms such as Discord, each community member is seeing a similar (if not the same) string of information, in the same order. This allows users to communicate more effectively. Users could also join audio channels where they could debate, discuss and plan in real time, once again underlining a sense of trust and greater community. According to the Discord website ‘permissions can be customised and managed by the server owner or a moderator to dictate how various roles or a particular voice channel can utilise the new embedded chat in voice channel feature’. Once again, this provides moderators with the ability to structure and organise participation to streamline important information.

Tufecki writes ‘ostensible leaderlessness does not stop de facto leadership from springing up’. While moderation is decentralised, personal messages can be edited or deleted, and moderators have the ability to determine who can or cannot contribute to online discussion. While this prevents channels from being susceptible to spam messages or flooding, it also leaves control with a small number of moderators who could misuse, censor or create bias in such channels. Some Discord channels have prevented this with the implementation of bots that notify users when a message has been edited or deleted, but unless a record has been kept, it can be hard to determine the integrity of a message. While similar practices of bias also take place on the ground- who is entitled to speak at a protest, for example- it can be much harder to interpret the flow of discussion in online chatrooms. While many may argue that Discord acted as a ‘public square’ in the case of the Nepalese 2025 uprising, the degrees of access to information through this software may differ from person to person, and to mirror the two is a reasonable but inaccurate analogy.

Chatrooms such as these raise the question of anonymity. While varying degrees of privacy could be orchestrated by community members, using Discord during the 2025 protests did not come without a certain level of risk. Government administrations such as the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology have access to personal information- linking users to their online accounts through cellular connection or phone numbers. Linda Herrera writes about this in the context of the 2012 protests in Cairo opposing the Muslim Brotherhood. Gika - a seventeen year old outspoken political activist - ran a popular and well known Facebook page, to which he posted ‘This is the last post I am writing until I return tomorrow from the street of the freedom eyes. That’s if I come back’. He was targeted and assassinated after being betrayed by one of his comrades the same day. Similarly, Gen-Z protestors understood the gravity of the situation. A high profile online presence did not come without danger. Lamichhane writes ‘I never assumed Discord was fully secure. That would not be a reasonable assumption.’ While audio and video are end-to-end encrypted on Discord, messages on the platform are not and online groups are susceptible to moles and leaks. Despite this, many activists choose to reveal their identities, feeling protected by the scale of the movement, or because they are already known for being outspoken politically and so feel there is no point concealing their identities.

Discord possesses many levels of restriction to accessibility. According to GSMA intelligence, data suggests that there were 16.5 million internet users in Nepal in January 2025, just 55.8 percent of the total population at that the start of the year. Beyond this first obvious barrier lay many others, such as digital literacy, consistent internet connection, and ability to create a Discord account in the first place, which requires a valid email address or phone number. Hami Nepal’s central and primarily used Discord server during the Gen-Z protests called YouthsAgainstCorruption consisted of approximately 145, 000 members, a minute portion of Nepal’s population- yet these users held a mini election to vote for the countries new Prime Minister- silencing the large majority who could not or did not join the server. Post-revolt mobilisation becomes hard in this context. While Shaswot Lamichhane saw visible changes, stating that he felt a change in mindset around him: ‘People saw that coordinated action could actually produce visible consequences’, such quickly organised movements can lack the structure for longevity and long-lasting energy.

Considering privacy, organisational capabilities and weaknesses, access limitation, moderation and signalling on Discord can point to new horizons for protest in the online era. Having an in depth understanding of the limitations and strengths of social platforms such as Discord can help shape the way we communicate and relate with one another, especially in a political context. Historian Melvin Kranzberg states ‘technology is neither good or bad, nor is it neutral’ and through this astute observation can it perhaps be best understood the relation between protest culture and the digital world- for it is not simply a separate new reality, but the very same one that already exists. The affordances of the software may influence the way one thinks, acts and reacts, but each circumstance is wholly individual and the outcome is not determined by the software. By understanding how some of the principles of how Discord and softwares like Discord may exist in these circumstances, activists and campaigners have a greater harness over these technologies in a way that paves a new, brighter future.

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