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Journalism of Courage
Former Supreme Court justice Sushila S Karki was sworn in as Nepal’s interim Prime Minister on Friday (September 12), culminating a week of deadly youth-led violence that had unseated the KP Sharma Oli government.
The country will hold elections on March 5, 2026, to elect the next government and prime minister. The appointment of the 73-year-old former chief justice makes her the first woman to hold the post.
To recall, the “Gen Z” protests in Nepal initially began as a social media protest against the lifestyles of the “nepo kids”. These took a violent turn once Prime Minister Oli announced a ban on all social media applications that failed to comply with the government’s rules. The uprising was met with firing and tear gas by security forces, who were faced with an increasingly militant uprising that set fire to politicians’ residences and government buildings, including the parliament. At least 51 people were killed and 1,300 were injured as a result, Reuters reported.
The manner of Karki’s appointment has generated curiosity, with protesters flocking to the messaging app Discord to cast an informal vote in her favour. Here is what to know about the platform dubbed “Slack for Gamers” and how the vote unfolded.
Discord’s evolution from a gaming-first to a social platform
Discord is an instant messaging platform with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol, or simply Internet calling) capabilities, which allows its users to communicate through text messages, voice and video calls, and media sharing. Users may share messages privately through personal messages, or in virtual community chat rooms called “servers”, which are accessible through invitation links.
Founded in 2015 by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy, both founders of social gaming platforms, Discord emerged from Citron’s struggles in the online gaming industry. After limited success with a multiplayer game, he focused on perfecting the chat feature, making it the sole product.
“I think at the time we had maybe six users,” Citron told The New York Times in a 2021 interview. “It wasn’t clear that it was going to work.”
The platform, which counts as its competition Slack and the now-defunct Skype, initially focused on improving its voice technology, even rebuilding the tech three times within the first few months of the application going live. It also allowed its users to assign roles and permissions to different members on their servers, allowing them to moderate and even ban people from the servers.
The platform has steadily grown since, reaching over 200 million monthly users by May 2024. Of these, 90% are gamers, logging 1.5 billion hours playing games. The onset of the Covid pandemic helped Discord diversify into other markets. Even as working adults flocked to Zoom, Discord was favoured by the younger generation to freely socialise, forming and finding communities to discuss subjects
Key Discord features
Despite the intimidating jargon associated with the platform (like servers and channels), the actual user experience on the platform is not as complicated.
Users may access Discord through the browser or a dedicated mobile or desktop application (from Android to iOS, Windows to MacOS). They may create a unique username and find friends using their usernames.
Specialised communities, allowing users to find and form communities (like groups on Facebook, sub-reddits on Reddit) on topics ranging from politics to music, mental health to gaming.
Specific chat rooms allowing the members to engage in written discussions on a subject.
These allow for spoken conversation among the users. However, unlike a typical voice call, a user can enter a voice channel and start conversing as if they were physically present in a room with their peers. There are no issues with hopping in or off a call, unlike a Zoom call, which requires the host to log in for the e-meeting to begin. This has been Discord’s USP.
Typically used by gamers to showcase their gameplay, provided they have the requisite permission to do so on a voice channel, and Discord recognises the specific game. During the pandemic, this feature was widely used to enable watch parties on streaming apps.
Roles may be assigned to different members in a server. The highest-ranking among these are the moderators or admins who may lay down the guidelines of the server, moderate the content, and even remove non-compliant members.
Badges operate like badges or medals in real life. Users on a server may earn specific badges for meeting a certain milestone.
How Nepal leveraged Discord to select the new PM
The current protests have been drastically different from previous waves since they were loosely organised across multiple cities and did not have a single central organising group. All activity was coordinated through social media platforms, including Discord. ABC News Australia reported that the movement was not prepared for a quick outcome.
“This was an organic, decentralised protest across multiple cities — not a centrally organised movement,” 26-year-old protester Bishal Sapkota told ABC Australia. “Frankly, the protesters didn’t expect the government to fall within just two days, so they were somewhat unprepared for this rapid success.”
One Discord server with over 100,000 members became the focal point, watched on Nepalese national TV and livestreamed on news sites. Oli’s resignation on September 9, as well as the removal of the cabinet, created a void that the citizens were eager to fill, and this server was centrestage to the deliberations that followed.
“The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord,” The NYT quoted Sid Ghimiri, 23, a content creator from Kathmandu, as saying. The server is run by members of Hami Nepal, an NGO that has previously mobilised support during earthquakes, floods, and international relief campaigns.
Any PM candidate needed to be amenable to the country’s military, which exercised de facto control of the country absent a functioning government. The NYT reported that Nepal’s army chiefs met the organisers of the server and tasked them with finding a potential candidate.
“The point was to simulate a kind of mini-election,” Shaswot Lamichhane, a fresh high school graduate and channel moderator who has represented the group in talks with the military, told The NYT. The Discord group did not represent the whole country, and its goal was merely to suggest an interim leader who could oversee elections, he said.
The server swelled to over 145,000 users in four days, and was repeatedly hijacked by trolls and non-Nepalese citizens, making the deliberations a largely chaotic experience.
The members deliberated among several possible candidates, including Nepalese cricketer Sagar Dhakal, and former electricity chief Kul Man Ghising. Eventually, the Discord group arrived at a consensus around Sushila Karki. She secured the most votes in an informal poll on the server, and her name was proposed for meetings with the army.
On Thursday, Karki secured the approval of Nepal’s president Ram Chandra Poudel, and the Army chief, General Ashok Raj Sigdel, the Discord channel organisers said.
