Nepal internet crackdown part of global trend toward suppressing online freedom
The repression of Nepal against social media societies, which led to demonstrations and the police to kill at least 19 people, is part of a decline of several years of freedoms on the Internet around the world when even democracies seek to restrict the discourse online.
The government of the Himalayan country said last week that it blocked several social media platforms, including Facebook, X and Youtube because companies do not comply with a requirement to register with the government. The ban was lifted on Tuesday after the deadly demonstrations.
What is happening in Nepal reflects “this wider scheme of controlling the story and controlling stories emerging from the soil,” said Aditya Vashistha, deputy professor of information sciences at Cornell University. “This has happened several times in neighboring countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. So this is nothing new – in fact, I would say that this is taken from the game book, which is now very established, to try to control social media stories. ”
Like neighboring countries, the Government of Nepal has asked companies to appoint an affair in the country. Officials call for laws to monitor social media and ensure that users and operators are responsible and responsible for what they share. But this decision was criticized as a tool for censorship and punishment for opponents who express their online protests.
“Governments absolutely have a valid interest in trying to regulate social media platforms. It is such a daily part of our lives and in our business. And it is certainly reasonable that the authorities sit down and say that we want to develop rules for the road, “said Kian Vesteinssson, main research analyst for the technology and democracy of the Washington Freedom House, based in Washington.
“But what we see in Nepal is that large blocks as a means of applying a set of rules for social media companies cause extremely disproportionate damage. These measures that have been put in place in Nepal (cut) tens of millions of people from the platforms they used to express themselves, to lead daily affairs, to speak with their families, to go to school, to obtain information on health care. ”.
It’s not just Nepal. Freedom House found that Global Internet Freedom decreased for the 14th consecutive year in 2024, while governments retract dissent and people are confronted with arrest for having expressed political, social or religious opinions online. While China is constantly at the top of the list as the “worst environment of the world” for the freedom of the Internet, last year, Myanmar also shared this designation. The organization did not follow Nepal.
India adopted a telecommunications law in 2023 which gave its government “large powers to restrict communications online and intercept communications”, according to Freedom House. Three years earlier, an internet law put digital platforms like Facebook under the supervision of the direct government. The officials say that the rules are necessary to suppress disinformation and hate speech and to give users more power to report reprehensible content. But criticisms have warned that this would lead to censorship in a country where digital freedoms have already reduced.
In January, on the other hand, the lower room of the Pakistani parliament adopted a bill which gives the government sweeping controls on social networks, in particular the sending of users to prison for propagating disinformation.
Calling the Internet Freedom as a “pillar of modern democracy”, Freedom House said that a healthy democracy of the 21st century cannot work without a trustworthy online environment, where people can access information and express themselves freely.
More and more, however, governments install roadblocks.
Often, the regulations are in the name of children’s safety, cybercrime or fraud, Vesteinsson said: “But unfortunately, a large part of this regulation is hand with restrictive measures.”
In Nepalese law, for example, “the same provision of this law, orders social media platforms to restrict content relating to children’s trafficking and the trafficking of human beings and work, a really important question,” he added. “Two chips above that, he orders the platforms to prevent people from publishing anonymously.”
The committee to protect journalists said on Monday that demonstrations “underline the general concerns about the ban on Nepal on social media and the urgent need to leave the government to abandon its order. Such a radical ban restricted not only freedom of expression, it also seriously hinders the work of journalists and the law of the public, namely. ”
Repression seems to have stimulated an increase in the use of virtual private networks, or VPN, according to Proton, which provides encrypted services. Proton VPN service registrations in Nepal have jumped 8,000% since September 3, according to data that the company has published online. A VPN is a service that allows users to hide their location in order to circumvent online vision restrictions based on censorship or geography.
But experts warn that VPNs are not a final solution to the government’s internet blocks. They can be expensive and out of reach for many people, noted Vashistha, and they can be slow and lead to lower quality experiences when people try to access the blocked social platforms.
Google, Meta, X and Tiktok (who registered and continue to operate) did not respond to requests for comments.
Vesteinson said that companies can take important measures to protect the confidentiality of their users – in particular human rights defenders and activists who could be a specific target for government repression in their country.
“It is extremely important that social media platforms are responsible for their users in this way,” he said.
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The commercial writer AP Kelvin Chan and the technology writer AP Matt O’Brien contributed to this report.
