[dahsameer]

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.

[mynameismon]

Interesting that Mastodon was blocked. How exactly was that ban supposed to be enforced, by blocking every single instance in existence?

[dahsameer]

I'm pretty sure they didn't do their research well. They probably think mastodon's app is the top result that comes up when mastodon is typed into google. They also decided to block MeWe which is weird because nobody I know has ever heard of it. Another interesting choice was Rumble. Twitch was left alone but Rumble was blocked

[dotnet00]

Probably the usual, where they don't actually know or care about how it works, and just blocked whichever big instance they're referring to.

[qwerty456127]

Blocking Signal or Reddit sounds bizarre for a civilized democratic country. What sense can that make other than denying people the right for privacy of personal communications or uncensored information access? I am very surprised Nepal goes this way.

[alephnerd]

> democratic country

Nepal is classified as a Hybrid Regime [0] in democracy rankings.

Following the end of the civil war, power has largely consolidated amongst 3 players - KP Sharma Oli, Sher Bahadur Deuba, and Prachanda - who play a game of musical chairs.

Ofc, both China and India are constantly interfering in Nepali politics and building random coalitions with permutations of these three along with smaller parties.

Whenever India feels Nepal is leaning too pro-China, some crisis happens, and whenever China feels Nepal is leaning to pro-India, some crisis also happens.

Indian state politics also plays a role, because the states of Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh have significant ethnic ties in Nepal (eg. Bihar's CM Nitish Kumar's family are Maithili with family ties across the borders, and his opponent Lalu Prasad Yadav has backed Yadav political movements in Nepal as well; UP's CM Yogi Adityanath is a Garhwali Rajput who used to lead a Hindu sect that was patronized by the Nepali royal family and still has significant pull in Nepal; and Sikkim's former CM Pawan Kumar Chamling was part of a ethno-tribal movement amongst Janjatis/Tibeto-Burman tribals who were at the bottom rung of the Nepal during it's monarchical rule; KP Sharma Oli grew up in a village barely 20 miles from Naxalbari right when the Naxalite/Maoist insurgency began in West Bengal), which adds another layer of complexity, because state level politics often leaks across both Nepal and India.

[0] - https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2024/

[skinnymuch]

While unequal exchange and western hegemony exists, it always makes sense to not want a global south society to be using western companies like Reddit

[stainablesteel]

maybe this is odd but i just have to ask, do you consider reddit usage to be the sign of a civilized democracy?

[nirava]

This is not true. "Switch your DNS" hasn't worked for while. It didn't work for the TikTok ban. The ISPs are not incompetent.

If the DNS change solution ever works, because they are half-assing it for whatever reason. And this time they apparently aren't.

And in any case, this is a really bad way to look at this situation. Your response to the government taking the next step in what looks like a very well planned power grab and move towards authoritarianism shouldn't be "well the ISPs suck here".

[lighttower]

TikTok is still allowed? Isn't it the most damaging?

[noselasd]

TikTok complied with their regulation last year. The regulations basically requires social media platforms with > 1 million nepalese accounts to get a license to operate in Nepal.

The bill and requirments doesn't seem unreasonable, atleast according to https://www.lawgandhi.com/social-media-bill-2081-2025/

[lawlessone]

>Isn't it the most damaging?

Depends on who you ask. I'd consider it damaging but nowhere near as damaging as X in recent times. And would consider FB worse that both for sheer the hysteria it generates in the old.

[bee_rider]

I think it less like: governments see social media sites as damaging, so they ban them.

It is more like: a lot of people see social media sites as damaging, so they don’t particularly care when their governments ban them for whatever arbitrary reasons the governments come up with.

So, I’d expect the more that social media sites come back online to reflect their responsiveness to dealing with government demands, not the damaging-ness.

[amelius]

> switch your DNS, and you're good to go

Except you might get a visit from the FCC equivalent.

[dahsameer]

as long as my ISP doesn't snitch on me, I'm fine. ISPs also have a stake in this ban because the last time a block was implemented (on TikTok), people flocked to VPNs, which drove up bandwidth costs for them. so, I think while ISPs in Nepal are technically complying with the law by blocking these services, they're doing it in a way that’s intentionally easy to bypass. Now that TikTok is unbanned, the news of DNS switching is spreading quickly in Nepal through it

[jjice]

> switch your DNS, and you're good to go

That would definitely allow you to access the sites again, but is it illegal to do that now, or is this kind of just a soft block without legal ramifications?

[diggan]

> That would definitely allow you to access the sites again, but is it illegal to do that now, or is this kind of just a soft block without legal ramifications?

The move seems to not be about blocking citizens access or trying to prevent communication at all, but rather to punish those specific companies because they weren't following the law, since there are companies who weren't blocked.

[spike021]

wouldn't using a VPN be just as illegal then?

[deadbabe]

What if you just access the IP directly?

[nomel]

A sparsly populated host file will get around it.

[ranguna]

Then you'll lose https I believe

[lawlessone]

BlueSky still good i guess.

[rancidcrab]

Doesn't signal automatically proxy your traffic if it detects that the domain is blocked? I assume signal will just continue to work in Nepal despite their DNS block.

[zelphirkalt]

I would agree, but one exception: Signal. How did Signal brush them the wrong way? Do they have a law against e2ee that is at odds fundamentally with how Signal works?

[electriclove]

Why?

[ivape]

What’s the justification? Only a state religion could provide the societal justification. I don’t know, I’m recently living under Trump, so a failed authoritarian state is very new to me. Can anyone explain how normalized and day-to-day news like this is over there?

For example, we really don’t know what to do with news like this here, most of us just go on with our lives.