The Discord Revolution: How Nepal Elected a Prime Minister and What It Means for Communities

Sometimes the most profound insights come from the most unexpected stories. On the latest episode of the Levels Podcast, Punit Jajodia shared something that sounds like science fiction but actually happened in Nepal: young people organized a political protest, held a vote, and elected a new prime minister—all on Discord.

For B2C founders, this story reveals a massive shift happening in how communities form, organize, and wield influence. The public web is dying. Dark social is rising. And if you're still building your community strategy around public platforms, you're already behind.

The Story That Changes Everything

During a recent political crisis in Nepal, young citizens needed to organize. They needed to discuss strategy, coordinate action, and make collective decisions. Where did they go?

Not Facebook. Not Twitter. Discord.

"We recently in Nepal, we had a protest against the government and suddenly a discord group came together and we elected the new prime minister to a discord vote."

Punit's reaction captures the surreal nature of it: "And it happened right in front of us, we like, what's happening?"

But here's the crucial part—it wasn't random. There was a specific reason these young Nepalis chose Discord over the established social platforms.

"And you know why all those young people decided to go on Discord? Because they didn't want to do it on Facebook. They felt more comfortable in the private community."

The Great Retreat from Public Platforms

This wasn't just about Nepal. It's a pattern playing out globally. People are migrating away from public social media and into private, gated communities.

"A lot of the content is disappearing from Google because there's no incentives to put it publicly. A lot of communities are going away from public groups into these dark social communities or gated communities almost. Because the motivation to post something publicly is just not there. It's just too crowded."

Think about what this means. For over a decade, the internet operated on a simple premise: create content publicly, get discovered through search or social feeds, build an audience, monetize attention. That entire model is collapsing.

Why? Three reasons:

The noise is overwhelming. Posting publicly now means competing with billions of other posts, AI-generated content, and algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement over relevance. Your voice gets lost.

Privacy concerns have grown. People have learned—sometimes painfully—that public posts live forever and can be taken out of context. The risks of public sharing now outweigh the benefits for many.

The incentives have shifted. What do you gain from posting publicly versus in a private Discord server with 50 people who actually care? For most individuals, the private group delivers more value.

Why Discord Wins

Discord offers something that public platforms fundamentally cannot: control, privacy, and intimacy at scale.

"People want to be part of smaller group. People want privacy."

It's not that people don't want community. They desperately want it. But they want community on their terms—in spaces they control, with people they choose, away from the algorithmic chaos of public feeds.

Discord (and similar platforms like Slack communities, Telegram groups, and private forums) provides this. You know who's in the room. The conversation stays in the room. There's no algorithm deciding what you see. It's closer to the early internet forum experience than to modern social media.

What This Means for Search and Discovery

The migration to dark social creates a profound problem for businesses that relied on public discovery.

When Programiz was growing through SEO, people would search for "Python for loop," find their content publicly on Google, and become users. That model worked because both the questions and answers lived in public.

Now, people ask those questions in Discord servers. They get answers from other community members. The entire transaction happens in private. Google never sees it. Neither does any business trying to reach those users.

"The game is rigged. They are seeing results from companies, not people. They are seeing recommendations curated by companies. And conveniently, they are the number one product, obviously."

People have seen through the public web's growth hacks. They know the top search results are often paid for or SEO-gamed. They know "best product" lists are usually written by the companies themselves. They've learned to trust peers over search results.

"So people have seen through the game, right? It's game of backlinks and how much money you can spend."

The New Discovery Model

If traditional search and social are dying, how do people discover products now? They ask their friends. They ask in their communities. They trust recommendations from real people they know—or at least from real people they can talk to directly.

"That is why people are kind of breaking up with big, the idea of going to Google and searching for these answers. They are now asking their friends. They are asking, they want to ask people directly and they want to know who is answering. They don't want to see this black box in a screen answering the questions."

This creates both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is you can't simply buy your way into these private communities through ads or SEO. The opportunity is that authentic participation creates far more valuable relationships than paid acquisition ever could.

Building for Dark Social

Programiz's response to this shift was to create their own Discord community—but not as a broadcast channel. As a genuine space for learners to help each other.

"We now have a discord community where we run monthly challenges on the website and we have something called a wall of inspiration. The idea is to do projects, do your own projects and submit them to the wall of inspiration and while you're building the project, if you ever feel lonely or if you want help, you go to the Discord community."

They also created a community engagement role—someone whose entire job is to participate authentically in communities where potential users gather. Not to spam links, but to genuinely answer questions and provide value.

The key principle: authenticity. No fake accounts. No AI-generated responses pretending to be human. No astroturfing.

"There's no shame in doing that. Versus big companies, if you don't be authentic, if you pretend to be someone else, that is not scalable. Or if you try to use AI to spam the comment section on Reddit or fake, create fake questions using new Reddit users, all of that."

Platforms like Reddit have gotten good at detecting inauthentic behavior. The moderation systems work. If you try to game them, you get banned—and you lose access to those communities entirely.

The Content Strategy Shift

This migration to dark social also changes how content works. Instead of creating public content optimized for search algorithms, you need content that sparks conversation in communities.

Punit notes that even if he started over with content today, he'd do it differently:

"Even if I did the content, I would put myself first or the author first because people want to and you're seeing that across TikTok, Instagram, like people build a following on TikTok and Instagram and then they start businesses from there."

The model has flipped. Instead of faceless content that ranks on Google, you need personal content that builds trust. Instead of optimizing for keywords, you optimize for connection. Instead of thinking like an SEO ghost, you need to show up as a real person.

The Role of Community in Growth

For B2C companies, community is no longer optional—it's the primary growth engine.

"Communities are extremely important and investing in communities is 100%, 100%, 120% right way to go."

But not just any community. Not a Facebook Group that you post to once a month. Not a Slack with 10,000 inactive members. Real community requires:

Active participation from your team. Someone needs to be there daily, answering questions, facilitating discussions, building relationships.

Authentic value exchange. People join communities to get help and connect with peers, not to be marketed to. Provide genuine value first.

The right platform for your audience. Where do your users naturally hang out? Meet them there, don't force them to come to you.

Patience with measurement. Community ROI is hard to quantify immediately but compounds over time as members become advocates.

What LLMs Miss

Interestingly, while ChatGPT and other LLMs contributed to the decline of public search traffic, they haven't replaced the need for human community. In fact, they might be accelerating the move to private spaces.

LLMs can answer factual questions, but they can't provide the context, empathy, and shared experience that comes from talking to someone who's been in your exact situation. They can't celebrate your wins or commiserate over your failures. They can't introduce you to others facing similar challenges.

The future isn't choosing between AI and humans—it's using AI for information while seeking humans for connection, accountability, and belonging.

Practical Steps for Founders

If you're building a B2C product and haven't adapted to the dark social shift, here's where to start:

Find where your users gather. Not where you wish they gathered, but where they actually are. Discord? Telegram? Private Slack communities? Reddit? TikTok comments?

Show up authentically. Create real accounts with your real name and company affiliation. Provide value without expecting immediate returns.

Build your own space. Create a Discord, Slack, or forum where your users can connect with each other—not just with you.

Invest in community engagement as a role. This isn't a side project for your marketing team. It requires dedicated focus.

Measure differently. Track relationship depth, not just reach. Quality of conversations matters more than quantity of members.

Be patient. Community building is slow. It compounds over time. The payoff comes in retention, referrals, and resilience—not immediate conversions.

The Broader Trend

The Nepal Discord story is an extreme example, but it points to a future where more and more collective action happens in private digital spaces. Commerce, education, organizing, dating, career networking—all moving toward gated communities.

For founders, this means the old playbooks are obsolete. You can't growth hack your way to scale by gaming algorithms. You need to genuinely serve communities, build trust, and earn word-of-mouth.

The good news? This is actually more defensible than paid acquisition. Once you've built real relationships in communities, competitors can't simply outbid you. The community itself becomes your moat.

Key Points

• Young Nepalis organized a political protest and elected a prime minister through a Discord vote
• They chose Discord over Facebook because they wanted privacy and felt more comfortable in a gated community
• Content and communities are migrating away from public platforms into "dark social" spaces
• People no longer trust public search results or company-curated reviews—they ask friends in private communities
• Programiz responded by creating their own Discord and hiring for community engagement roles
• Authentic participation in communities matters more than paid acquisition or SEO optimization
• The shift requires showing up as real humans, not faceless brands or SEO-optimized content
• Community building is slow but creates compounding returns in retention and referrals

Listen to the full conversation to hear more about how Programiz is navigating the shift from public web to dark social and building genuine communities around learning to code.