The protesters used a Discord server as a space for organization and debate to vote for the next leader
During the pandemic, Discord experienced a significant boom, especially among Generation Z. Over time, the platform stopped being limited to the gaming sphere and servers dedicated to different interests and communities began to multiply.
Today, Discord presents itself as a comprehensive communication space that allows users to interact in servers organized into thematic channels, as well as offering features such as screen sharing, live streaming, and control and moderation tools.
After Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli's decision to ban 26 social media applications, including Instagram and Facebook, thousands of Generation Z youths took to the streets to protest.
The demonstrations soon led to episodes of violence and brutal repression by the authorities, resulting in at least 51 people dead and ending with the fall of the communist regime in the country. The protesters, mostly young people, claim that they sought to put an end to years of corruption in the national administration.
With Oli out of office and no trust in the traditional political class, Generation Z faces the difficult task of choosing a new leader. In this context, many of them turned to the digital platform Discord as a space for organization and debate, where they voted for the country's new interim leader: the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nepal, Sushila Karki.
The Discord application was created in May 2015 by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy as a chat-oriented social network. Both already had experience developing services for gamers and sought to design a communication tool that would not interfere with the gaming experience.
In its early days, the application was focused on allowing players to talk to each other without leaving a game. By the end of 2016, it already had more than 25 million users.
A Discord server functions as a large community space where users can gather and organize different interaction channels. These channels can be intended for text messages, voice conversations, or even video calls. By default, a server can host up to 500,000 members. However, only 250,000 of them can be connected and active at the same time within that server.
Generation Z youths turned to Discord as a tool to coordinate their protests. After overthrowing Oli, the protesters relied on the server called "Youth Against Corruption" to organize the election of a new political figure.
Within the space, several polls were conducted with the aim of selecting the next leader of Nepal, in which users voted according to their preference. According to reports, by Wednesday, September 10, the server appeared to have reached an agreement: the choice fell on Sushila Karki, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nepal.
The day after the vote, Karki held a meeting with President Ram Chandra Poudel and the head of the Army, General Ashok Raj Sigdel. Meanwhile, Shaswot Lamichhane, the server's moderator, told the New York Times that the vote was not official, but rather aimed to propose an interim leader capable of overseeing the electoral process.
