I thought it was super ironic that after the government of Nepal banned almost all social media platforms last week, this week the Gen Z protesters who overthrew the government used one of those platforms, discord, to choose a new prime minister.
The person they picked is 73 year old Sushila Karki, who used to be a Cheif justice of the Supreme Court until she retired at age 65, and is the only woman to have ever held that position. She is also now the first and only female to run the country. The protests that overthrew the Nepali government this past week were started to protest corruption in government, and Karki is known for being fiercely against corruption as a judge. She was sworn in on Friday. Good luck to her. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c179qne0zw0o
This also makes me wonder what could be done to make discord (or something similar) a better venue for direct democracy. I know the circumstances in Nepal were exceptional, but I wonder if we will see other countries experiment with Discord for similar purposes. It seems like in Nepal they have essentially used it as a caucus, and I wonder if this could be shaped into a better way to elect leaders (or even legislate directly) than what most of the world is doing.
My wife and I were talking about this today and we thought it's possible that what has just happened in Nepal is at least in some sense the most democratic thing any country has ever done.
In one sense representative democracy is mob rule scaled up, but yeah this is mob rule scaled way down then applied to everyone else without representation.
(“democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." etc)
Discord is a place you get randomly banned forever and that cannot be reliably linked to your real identity. It's really not a place anyone should rely on for any real world actions. (And I'm even skipping basics like transparency and future audits)
I daydream about a open source peer reviewed system, that can process votes, control, manage government at every level through general public and open voting system. Distributing control ultimately.
Absolutely. Discord is a scourge, a completely closed proprietary platform that is impossible to access via any standard compliant mechanism. Even for their website they demand a phone number just to read anything.
Liquid democracy is a total viable platform. But Discord is better in so far as it can be used for all kinds of things and conversations, not just for voting or debates.
IMO, the superflat architecture is the opposite of maximum inclusion. The luckiest kid always wins the debate. Ensuring hierarchical mobility by allowing weaker players bunch of small wins is key.
Seems a bit vulnerable to subversion of the host (and/or its government) once they decide to pay attention (or even through negligence; imagine a minister being banned because of some ML false-positive).
If the format is to be sustainable, they will need to find or found a different platform.
It's kind of ironic that a nominally communistic government doesn't believe that the people have agency to act on their own, guess it reflects their own fears. I hope Xi lies sleepless at night worrying about the Chinese people getting rid of him.
Discord servers and its most active users were paid NGO workers of Samata Foundation and Hami Nepal, which are very well funded NGOs by The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is in turn funded by the US Congress and run by the CIA
i ve been waiting for democracies to go digital for ages. We should be electing mayors like that too. there s no reason for all this gatekeeping and secrecy in politics other than to enable corruption
The person they picked is 73 year old Sushila Karki, who used to be a Cheif justice of the Supreme Court until she retired at age 65, and is the only woman to have ever held that position. She is also now the first and only female to run the country. The protests that overthrew the Nepali government this past week were started to protest corruption in government, and Karki is known for being fiercely against corruption as a judge. She was sworn in on Friday. Good luck to her. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c179qne0zw0o
My wife and I were talking about this today and we thought it's possible that what has just happened in Nepal is at least in some sense the most democratic thing any country has ever done.
How is one faction holding an internal vote to impose rule on the rest of the people, who have no representation, anything at all like a democracy?
(“democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." etc)
If the format is to be sustainable, they will need to find or found a different platform.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/world/asia/nepal-protest-...
It was Discord that changed the government, it was the looting and burning down of government building by well funded and organized mobs.
They do not believe that people can act on their own, everything is a conspiracy to them. Because why you would rebel against their utopia?
Not worth arguing with them. Cast them to the dustbin of history where they belong.