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I'm from Nepal. The bans are implemented in a pretty straightforward way: ISPs simply don't resolve DNS queries for these services. switch your DNS, and you're good to go. There are 26 apps that were banned: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Reddit, Discord, Pinterest, Signal, Threads, WeChat, Quora, Tumblr, Clubhouse, Mastodon, MeWe, Rumble, VK, Line, IMO, Zalo, Soul, and Hamro Patro.

Nepal's requirements don't seem very different than the EU. The main difference is simply that Nepal is small so the companies dont care.

Social media companies must have a local contact person, office, and comply with the Directive for Regulation of Social Media Use, 2080. That law requires social media companies to remove content deemed illegal.

Honestly, we'd all probably be better off without Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, threads, Pinterest, LinkedIn social networking, and quora.

YouTube has some value but shorts being not opt out able is a serious problem. Reddit has some value too.

Signal, discord, and the other realtime messengers much more of a concern.

I wonder whether the companies that didn't register chose this intentionally because they object to the legal requirements, or whether they simply didn't have anyone in charge of compliance with Nepali law and were unaware this would happen. That they don't appear to have statements ready maybe indicates the latter?

Many countries in the region are banning social media. In Bangladesh, they recently banned Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube: https://www.timesnownews.com/world/asia/bangladesh-bans-what.... Of course, Bangladesh did so in an effort to suppress a national movement that actually ended up overthrowing the government. So maybe Nepal has good reasons to worry, lol.

EU should to the same (FB & X).

In general anything that has "algorytmic content ordering" that pushes content triggering strong emotional reactions should be banned and burned to the ground.

It is great to see - all companies should comply with laws or get out of the country. Whatever the country, whatever the law, whatever the company.

Never understood why "internet media" companies decided it is fine to publish without moderating. Traditional media companies know they cannot do this.

Good! Every country should ban social media. Enought of this psychological poison. Messaging apps are enough for long distance contact. For small scale, specialized discussion, there are forums. Mass many-to-many platforms have to go. But overall, it is imperative that people go back to "living" in the real world, instead of the fake reality created by social media.

> Only five, including TikTok and Viber

Bloody hell! Viber is alive?

That was my first IM (India). Even when people had moved to WhatsApp I was sticking around as something felt less wrong on Viber (I can't recall now). But then I anyway had to move to WhatsApp. I have really not heard of it in a long time so I thought it would have be shutdown or something. And I don't recall it being from Japan either.

Great!

There are several inaccuracies in the comments here.

Although in the past, simple DNS level filtering was common, Telegram's IPs are now blocked at the routing level.

Is Nepal authoritarian? This is a bit complex. If they could or had the ability to enforce all of the laws on the books, then you might be able to argue that.

Nepal is better characterized as loosely anarchic. The country couldn't function if all of the regulations were enforced. What works for them is rampant corruption. This is how things are accomplished. Aside from that, the state institutions are completely inept in almost every way. Even excluding corruption, there isn't enough competence to enforce an authoritarian vision. Nepotism and the other factors you would expect play a role here.

The regulations which are enforced usually relate to opportunities for graft for those tasked with enforcement. Otherwise nobody can be bothered, or they don't want to rock the boat, because the person they'd take action against also has a minister or bureaucrat in their pocket. Easier for them to sit in their gov office, take milk tea, enjoy their benefits and doom scroll the day away.

So while on its face, regulating who can publish a website is an authoritarian affront to free speech norms, it is better understood as a cash grab. Perhaps some high profile journalists might be targeted, that is a recurring issue in Nepal.

Finally, although their Telegram efforts seem to be paying off, this latest effort seems overly ambitious. They have bitten off more than they can chew here. Business is usually conducted with a fair amount of bluster and posturing in Nepal. If tech majors simply ignore it, politicians will lose face. In general, everyone despises them already.

Due to the aforementioned issues, unemployment is a massive factor in Nepal. Money comes into the country from remittance, because doing biz locally is a losing proposition. It is extremely common to see doom scrolling all around Nepal, from the KTM valley to the rural villages. Cutting off YT and FB will create a massive backlash against the universally reviled political classes. It might be hard for outsiders to understand how widely the political class is disliked for their blatant ineptitude and corruption.

https://kathmandupost.com/national/2025/09/04/nepal-bans-fac... is imo a better source for this.

Any time you mention how the CIA uses social media to push their agenda (backed by evidence), your comments get flagged

haha

> It is not wrong to regulate social media

Yet it is wrong for a government to deny the people to access foreign services over the Internet when they want. That is wrong in the same sense as disallowing them to travel overseas, read untranslated books and consume services of vendors right there is.

It can be sorta okay to require local ISPs stop providing necessary connectivity readily but if the users find a way, punishing them for this or actively attacking the ways they do it is wrong.

Hopefully Nepal is not going this far.

Hopefully we'll get enough starlink like systems that bans like this become completely unenforceable.

In light of this I think countries are right to be wary of American media:

https://theintercept.com/2025/08/25/pentagon-military-ai-pro...

https://archive.is/1IElr

> Companies were given a deadline of Wednesday to register with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and provide a local contact, grievance handler and person responsible for self-regulation – or face shutdown.

Maybe I'm missing something but it seems the requirements were pretty reasonable? I wonder why the affected companies decided to ignore them.

Apart from the reasons for this block: Why do these decisions always have to be black and white. I believe it would benefit mental health if Facebook was blocked one day per week so people are forced to live a day without it.

Same with combustion vehicles and the climate: block cars in cities a couple of days per week, individually selected per person.

As someone from Nepal, Another bill was proposed in parliament that was killed due to public backlash. That bill contained language that broadly defined what counts as actionable offenses for legal proceedings. This current bill is the wolf in sheep's clothing compared to that one.Nepali politicians have always used vague language to justify their actions—like claiming TikTok "disrupts social harmony" to justify banning it. My personal understanding is this is more about control than anything else.The last mayoral election for the Kathmandu valley was won in Facebook by an outsider young candidate with no party affiliation. Legacy political parties are facing a paradigm shift they don't know how to navigate, so they want to control it. The main person overseeing this ban claims it's about tax collection we should be getting, but when last checked, companies are already paying taxes.

I’m a big fan of 100% anything goes free speech. But the insanity of how X has implemented this, makes me think twice. In turns out that if you allow completely free speech on a town public square, one of the most popular high engagement speech will be prejudice and hatred towards out-groups (to throw an olive branch to rightists, an outgroup can be immigrants for rightists or nazis for leftists though these days my X feed it is just anti immigrant and I don’t see much brown shirt hysteria ).

Now I’m convinced, free speech maybe works in a technocracy, where the common man has no power and could scream whatever he wants and you could ignore him. In a liberal democracy, probably speech, especially speech to the masses need to be policed, because the ideas that win to the masses are just complete insanity. And so my new leaning goes, I still can’t give up on my free speech prior, I don’t mind all the insane nonsense I see on X but I would mind if someone tries to implement that in real life and the way things go, I think that’s just a matter of time.

Finally Nepal took a bold decision on world stage. Much needed. Social media companies leech of these "unemployed" nepalese who are getting funds from remittance via saudi, qatar. The "Dalal Pujibad" as socialist aahuti says. And mass consumerism. Needs to stop. He gives an example where Nepalese migrant workers earn money making "stuffs" in Saudi, Qatar, China, Malaysia etc. And they send money back to Nepal where they now buy those items that they made. (They could be any other migrant workers).

The intent of government can be questioned however But this is a right step in a forward direction anyhow.

This should have been done far earlier.

The blocks has been propagated fairly now. I cannot access facebook, whatsapp, linkedin, reddit (major sites, others I have not checked).

To everyone agreeing with the decision, here's the real problem:

The efforts to consolidate power, control the media, repeal stricter corruption-related laws, and allow more power and wealth to the political elite have been crazy high in the last few years in Nepal. This much has been obvious to anyone paying attention.

This Social Media Ban is a pretty clear cut next logical step in that process. This could very well be a dampener, or a distraction, done in preparation for the next step.

So, in theory, in the hands of a reliable government, I'd be totally for a ban. I don't want any "mainstream" social media to be above the local laws.

But as it is, this is scary and will probably be looked at as an important event in history.

Good move. Hope all countries do block these apps.

Whenever i open YouTube in private tab all default recommendations are garbage. vulgar and sexist videos. its worse than garbage. Just imagine how many teens lives are ruined