No social media for Nepal citizens? Govt to shut down unregistered platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, X

The Nepal government has decided to shut down social media platforms that are not registered with  the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, as per a local news media portal.

As per reports, social media users trying to log in via web browsers have been complaining about an outage in the service, with the prompt reading “hmm... something went wrong”, “This site can’t be reached”, “Safari can’t connect to the server.”

The Government of Nepal on Thursday decided to block 26 social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and X, for operating without registration.

Nepal’s Communications Minister Prithvi Subba Gurung announced on Thursday that the government had taken the decision in line with a Supreme Court directive to regulate social media companies operating without approval.

The SC’s directive mentioned that platforms need to secure a licence within three months and renew it every three years.

The government had given seven days to social media platforms to list them in its cabinet meeting on August 25. The ministry had issued the notice for the second time on August 28.

As of now, only TikTok, Viber, Nimbuzz, BitTalk, and Poppo Live have been listed.