this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more) (en.setopati.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
67 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36863320

Comments

Viber, WeTalk, TikTok, Nimbuzz, and Poppo Live are already registered.

Similarly, Telegram and Global Diary are in the process of registration.

Social media platforms to be blocked:

  1. Facebook
  2. Facebook Messenger
  3. Instagram
  4. YouTube
  5. WhatsApp
  6. X (formerly Twitter)
  7. LinkedIn
  8. Snapchat
  9. Reddit
  10. Discord
  11. Pinterest
  12. Signal
  13. Threads
  14. WeChat
  15. Quora
  16. Tumblr
  17. Clubhouse
  18. Mastodon
  19. Rumble
  20. MeWe
  21. VK
  22. Line
  23. IMO
  24. Zalo
  25. Soul
  26. Hamro Patro

Other Sources

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[–] abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

OK so three things:

  1. How are they going to ban Mastodon. Like they cannot ban every mastodon instance.
  2. From what I know about people in regimes like this: VPN usage is basically normal because of things like this. I live in the UK and I'm using a VPN.
  3. Hamro Patro, if you don't know, is the Nepali "everything" app. It's officially a calendar app, but it also does News, Horoscopes (something that's important to Nepalis I guess), Exchange Rates, Radio and Podcasts. It is one of the most popular apps in the country and the most popular Nepali developed app period. This is like if the US banned the CNN app or if the British Government banned the Sky News app.
[–] tankfox@midwest.social 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Modern laws rarely if ever have anything to do with what they claim to be changing. Just figure out where the graft is flowing and that's your answer. There's no graft to be had with mastodon because nobody is making any money there so at first it's simply ignored unless it annoys someone in Nepal's government. If an instance suddenly started getting popular and making money in Nepal then it gets on their radar and they have to start paying bribes to continue operating just like the big guys, and there will be no room at all for a 'medium guy' who makes a little profit but not enough to comply with the requirements of corruption.

[–] abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 hours ago

It doesn't need to make money, it just needs to be a "Problem".

[–] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago

A number of these sites try hard to Filter out VPN users.

[–] Stubb@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 13 hours ago

They only implement DNS blocking so you have to change your DNS and everything will work again — this is also the case with their ban on porn sites. It's just an inconvenience to the citizens, all because they aren't competent enough to manage "criminal activites".

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 71 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I wish them luck banning Mastodon, Lemmy, and Nostr... Oh wait, they cant

[–] Das_Fossil@feddit.org 7 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Its totaly easy:

  1. Ban the apps
  2. Block major instances
  3. Jail some instance admins who doesn't shut down (and make a show out of it)

No, you will not get the hobby revolutionary this way who really wants to "fight the man", but you surely will scare away the nepalese version of the average joe and with this effectively killing the networks there for main stream adoption.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Are there any instance administrators in Nepal to jail?

[–] Das_Fossil@feddit.org 3 points 14 hours ago

Well... we will see

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Not familiar with the other examples, but Lemmy doesn't need an app. Can get to it via browser. Maybe the others need one?

[–] Das_Fossil@feddit.org 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Websites you can block via DNS - yes, i know that this can also be fairly easy circumvented - but the folks who know this are NOT the target audience for state action like that.

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 1 points 2 hours ago

Oh, yeah I know that sites can be blocked easily enough. My comment was more about whether specific apps are needed. For example, I rarely put apps for specific websites on my phone and instead just use the browser. Cuts way down on ads and other bullshit.

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 38 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I am curious how they are planning to ban Mastodon. I am assuming they are going to block say the top 25 instances?

[–] magguzu@midwest.social 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (2 children)

Hate to say it but it honestly doesn't sound crazy hard to just block any instance that pops up. Yes it's whack a mole but if it's an automated script, it can just crawl through a backdoor instance and ban any domain it sees.

[–] deadcream@sopuli.xyz 45 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Yeah that's a solved problem. Iran, Russia, China and other countries have gone through this "stages of denial" process years ago. It starts with "haha they are incompetent and can't block everything" and 10 years later half the Internet is blocked and you have prison sentencing for accessing "illegal" information (for the flgood of the people of course). Anyone who claims that internet censorship is not possible is a naive person fortunate enough to live in a place where it's not a thing.

"IT people/programmers are furry gay liberals" is a myth. There are plenty of bootlickers among them, like in any large enough group of people that's not defined by a specific ideology/political affiliation.

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 6 points 14 hours ago

As someone who is friends with many furry gay liberal IT dudes and dudettes.

I can't name a single one that wouldn't bend the knee the moment their job is threatened and their option is getting fired and risking their entire career or just being a good cog in the machine.

The people who bend the knee the fastest tend to be the ones most at risk of being abused by the powers that be should they not comply. It's the very fundamental reason that revolutions tend to be so explosive. There's a LONG build up of people not pushing against authority because of fear and security.

So till the breaking point where the gay furry liberals have no options and it's death or do what their bosses tell them. You can full well expect them to work right along with the bootlickers. They just are going to bitch about it more in the break room then the bootlickers.

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

They will block all instances except the ones registered. They just want a point of contact for when there is illegal activity. Yes it becomes a problem if they make criticizing the government legal but it is a democracy for now.

[–] maximumbird@lemmy.world 5 points 20 hours ago

Does a recursive DNS not get around all of this though? I’ve got to be missing something

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[–] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Blocking the domains connected to it is one way I can think of.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Because that works so well with the pirate bay. And with Mastodon or Lemmy, just having access to any one of the instances would enough.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

And as we all know, that would not ban it entirely. They'd have to block every instance, every new instance that comes online, the main web page, the code repository, etc., to even have a hope of banning it.

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There are sites dedicated to listing all federated lemmy instances. Knowing the FOSS nerds, surely there's even an API already.

Some might slip, but very few large ones. That's if the government cares about lemmy

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The fact it's interconnected makes it easy to just worm your way though banning everything.

Doesn't matter if it's all independently hosted. The greatest strength of the frediverse is the fact it's federated.

That also it's biggest fuck up point. These arent wholely independent forums.

And if the frediverse has to fully defederate everything to prevent itself from being scrubbed away. It defeats the entire fucking point.

Cause at that point just fucking go back to forums.

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

I think they best solution here is just easy to deploy proxies, it prevents banning by DNS or IP. More than that and they might as well just put the great firewall.

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[–] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Mastodon's main code repo is on GitHub, a government could just pressure MS to take down that repo, although that isn't going to account for anyone self-hosting an instance and also hosting their own git repos outside of any of the major hosts.

In order to take down self-hosted instances, they'd have to raid people's homes and take out their physical servers assuming they have physical servers in their place.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

I'm betting GitHub is not the only place that the code repo is mirrored. Sure, it might be there, but something tells me it's on a bunch of people's computers as well, for people who work on it, or have just forked the repository. And there's probably even copies of it on other mirrors, such as Code Bird, etc. in private repositories.

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[–] Linearity@infosec.pub 72 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Signal:
Settings -> Privacy -> Advanced -> Censorship Circumvention

[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Signal is a social media platform?

[–] thejml@sh.itjust.works 43 points 1 day ago (4 children)

It's in the "to be blocked" list posted.

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[–] big_slap@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (18 children)

signal has stories now, so I'd say yes

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[–] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

None of the platforms allowed employs E2E encryption, does it?

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 11 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Telegram allowed. It does not e2e encrypt by default. How will they make sure that option isn't chosen by Nepalese?

All Nepal is asking for is registration so that there is a point of contact if there are any complaints. Telegram contacted Nepal after being banned.

Others didn't respond and deliberately have no contact details online.

I tried to contact Reddit in Sydney about my ban but could only make them down to a multi-client large office building in Barangaroo.

This isn't necessarily a bad move on Nepal's part.

[–] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Nepal went full iron curtain. Hope the EU, US, and UK don't get any ideas....

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