KATHMANDU: Slick AI-generated disinformation has flooded election campaigns in Nepal, which votes Thursday in the first polls since deadly protests triggered by a brief ban on social media overthrew the government.
The September 2025 protests were driven by tech-savvy youth angry at job shortages and flagrant corruption by an aging political elite.
Now parties across the political divide are tapping social media to push their agendas and woo voters, especially the young, including a surge of people registering to cast their ballot for the first time.
But some of the content is manipulated or outright fake, experts and fact-checkers say.
“In a country where digital literacy is low, people believe what they see,” said Deepak Adhikari, editor of the independent NepalCheck team.
Kathmandu-based technology policy researcher Samik Kharel described a “digital battleground” in the run-up to the landmark vote, warning that Nepal lacked the expertise to monitor the onslaught of machine-generated content.
“It is even hard for experts to figure out what is real and fake,” Kharel said.
Around 80 percent of all of Nepal’s internet traffic is through social media platforms, he said.
Internet analytics site DataReportal estimates more than 56 percent of Nepal’s 30 million people are online, including 14.8 million Facebook users and around 4.3 million on Instagram. About 2.2 million are on TikTok, according to the Internet Service Providers’ Association of Nepal.
“Disinformation remains a top concern that could undermine the integrity of the election process,” said Ammaarah Nilafdeen of the US-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate.
“Nepal ... is grappling with the scale of the threat that disinformation poses to society and democracy at large.”
