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Nepal moves to block Facebook, X, YouTube and others

(www.aljazeera.com)
286 points saikatsg | 10 comments | 05 Sep 25 11:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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dahsameer ◴[05 Sep 25 12:42 UTC] No.45137841[source]▶
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.
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1. mynameismon ◴[05 Sep 25 12:46 UTC] No.45137877[source]▶
Interesting that Mastodon was blocked. How exactly was that ban supposed to be enforced, by blocking every single instance in existence?
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2. dahsameer ◴[05 Sep 25 12:49 UTC] No.45137909[source]▶
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
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3. dotnet00 ◴[05 Sep 25 12:50 UTC] No.45137918[source]▶
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.
4. diggan ◴[05 Sep 25 12:55 UTC] No.45137974[source]▶
> decided to block MeWe which is weird because nobody I know has ever heard of it

Seems to indicate they're not actually trying to prevent their citizens from doing anything in particular, they're just trying to get these international companies to follow their local laws since they operate there.

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5. AlecSchueler ◴[05 Sep 25 13:19 UTC] No.45138236{3}[source]▶
How dare they!
6. dahsameer ◴[05 Sep 25 13:23 UTC] No.45138280{3}[source]▶
One could argue that. There were also a few services that complied a long time ago: TikTok, Viber et al. Twitter(X) is currently discussing with government about this. Also, a big population in Nepal seem to agree with this decision. I could see a lot of people celebrating the decision to block these services.
7. slim ◴[05 Sep 25 18:52 UTC] No.45142212[source]▶
> 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

From experience, this is a symptom of them wanting to censor a specific piece of content which is on all those platforms. Look for it, you may discover something interesting.

I live in Tunisia, which had one of the most censored internet in the world before 2011.

8. Aloisius ◴[05 Sep 25 23:28 UTC] No.45144934{3}[source]▶
Does mastodon actually operate in Nepal?
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9. danielheath ◴[05 Sep 25 23:58 UTC] No.45145126{4}[source]▶
It's a big country; surely there's at least one instance running.
10. andypiper ◴[08 Sep 25 13:41 UTC] No.45168160{4}[source]▶
Mastodon gGmbH does not have an operating presence in Nepal - but it is not the whole of Mastodon (or the Fediverse) by any means!

I had a quick look at the maps I could find that indicated the locations of Mastodon server instances, and I was not able to find anything local to their - of course that's not to say there is not one or more. It is important to the network that there should be many Mastodon instances, in many places, so it would be great if there were some!