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Nepal Bans 26 Social Media Platforms, Including Signal
(sh.itjust.works)
The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of Nepal has issued an order requiring all social media platforms to be registered in Nepal.
Based on this, the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has instructed all network service providers to deactivate 26 platforms, including Signal, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, and others.
To lift the ban and operate legally in Nepal, each platform must:
-
Register with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.
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Appoint in Nepal:
- A Point of Contact
- A Resident Grievance Handling Officer
- An Officer responsible for monitoring compliance with self-regulation [1]
-
Submit an application in the prescribed format along with required documents, as per the Directives on Managing the Use of Social Media Networks (2080 B.S.). [2]
Reference:
[2] Directives for Managing the Use of Social Networks, 2023
For those people calling for the use of Tor, it's trivial to block Tor and I2P at the ISP level. It's not hard to get lists of relays and just add them to the block list.
You can use shadow socks, but you have to be careful.
We are globally heading into very privacy adverse waters. If they start making ISPs block VPN and piracy suspected sites, we might have to come up with something new to communicate in the open.
We're going to need something that looks like accountably legitimate traffic on the surface, but contains our actual content underneath.
Use bridges? I don't think it would be possible to block WebTunnel for example.
The authorities run their own web tunnel. The people that connect to it go on a naughty list. Everything it connects to goes on a naughty list.
Wash, rinse, and repeat that in a geodiverse style. Share your IP list with everyone else charged with finding web tunnel. wholesale block all traffic from any node participating. Start with a one day band, move to a one week ban, kick them off the network after that.