Just wait until you hear America picked a president because of a TV show...
A little education would go a long way here
Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban
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Re: Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban
#42A discord server with 150k people whose identity or nation of origin are not verified, where only 8000 people voted. This is as illegitimate an election as they come. Come literally just have been elected by Russian (or any other) bots.
Presumably if people aren't happy about it they'll just continue to revolt.
Re: Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban
#43This also makes me wonder what could be done to make discord (or something similar) a better venue for direct democracy. I know the circumstances in Nepal were exceptional, but I wonder if we will see other countries experiment with Discord for similar purposes. It seems like in Nepal they have essentially used it as a caucus, and I wonder if this could be shaped into a better way to elect leaders (or even legislate…
Taiwan has been trying to develop web platforms explicitly for facilitating democratic decision-making. Might be something to look into. Discord is a spectacularly bad fit for that, it was probably only used because the timetable was short and "it was there" and "everyone already had it".
I bet China is excited about that
Re: Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you want people to participate, or do you want to have the moral high-ground for using X, Y, Z? Nobody outside our fringe circles use IRC server/mailing lists. Younger people are all on Discord. I have no skin in this game, but I get the general line of thought.
You guys are using IRC??
I have, admittedly, used it once last year to get in touch with some people.
Re: Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban
#45i ve been waiting for democracies to go digital for ages. We should be electing mayors like that too. there s no reason for all this gatekeeping and secrecy in politics other than to enable corruption
because there is no safe way to vote digitally
Re: Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban
#46I'm hereby announcing my candidacy for world leader. I'll be running on a populist platform of self-enrichment. My first executive order will be to give myself access to unlimited money. Then I will use the money to acquire and/or launch tech companies and use price-gouging and predatory lending techniques to run all major corporations out of business. Then I will proclaim myself "The most cunning entrepreneur in the world" and I will write a book and give inspirational talks about how I did it all by myself without any special advantage. Then I will offer compulsory business advice to all the CEOs of the corporations (which I would have bankrupted) to explain to them that it's their fault they went bankrupt and should have worked harder.
Re: Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban
#47A discord server with 150k people whose identity or nation of origin are not verified, where only 8000 people voted. This is as illegitimate an election as they come. Come literally just have been elected by Russian (or any other) bots.
You'd be surprised, but there are numerous governments that claim to be democratic - while having a much weaker claim to democracy than "the current acting prime minister was elected by 8000 unverified randos in a snap election online".
Outside the comfy first world, the bar for government sanity can get extremely low.
Re: Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban
#48It's unclear if interim leaders should exist at all
Wouldn't it be best for the country to be leaderless, with no laws being made and all existing government departments continuing their work under the same set of budgets and instructions as before until a new leader is selected by the election department?
Re: Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban
#49A discord server with 150k people whose identity or nation of origin are not verified, where only 8000 people voted. This is as illegitimate an election as they come. Come literally just have been elected by Russian (or any other) bots.
It wasn’t an election. One of the more prominent youth groups involved in the protests used Discord to organize and decide internally which leader they should endorse and suggest to the president and army leadership. No one was directly elected on Discord.