Nepal is seeing a surge in the use of virtual private networks after hundreds of thousands of people joined street protests against a broad social media ban. One of the larger providers saw an 8,000 percent increase in new sign-ups inside the country, a shockingly quick sign that users sought out circumvention tools the moment the platforms went dark.
The surge to VPNs highlights an underlying principle of contemporary information control: As governments restrict access to mainstream platforms, public awareness and efforts to find technical ways around censorship grow in lockstep with one another. In Nepal’s case, a youth-led movement has been spurred, in part, by rage over the restrictions and broader grievances over governance absent oversight, and they have taken the fight for visibility and speech to the internet.
Inside the Social Media Ban of Nepal
Internet service providers were directed to block 26 social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Threads, Discord and Mastodon. The policy has been presented by officials as a compliance move, with platforms needing to register locally and identify a liaison to work on misinformation and abuse before they can be restored.
TikTok was still accessible after I had registered earlier, and Telegram, according to reports, had been slogging through the process. Nepal’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology indicated that registration of the platforms is the off-ramp to the ban list, but critics say the mandate is a prior restraint on speech and offers broad leeway to the state.
Public anger festered when the order came into force before going through Parliament, and when there were accusations of censorship and executive overreach. Protests turned deadly, according to the BBC, and hundreds people were injured, according to The New York Times, which cited local accounts. Police responded with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets as protesters advanced toward government buildings in Kathmandu, Reuters reported.
What the Numbers Reveal
Proton VPN said it had seen an 8,000% increase in signups from Nepal with new users surging during times when platforms were blocked. Though the number represents registrations by one provider, not total use, the figure is directionally significant — demand most likely exploded across multiple services — and the true scope of circumvention is almost certainly higher.
VPN use is also a typical antidote to platform bans and network outages. Other civil society monitors, like NetBlocks and the Open Observatory of Network Interference, have documented similar trends in other places where censorship sends users to tools that route traffic through servers outside a censored space to regain access. Proton VPN has previously reported triple- and even quadruple-digit percentage increases in usage in other countries after major blocks, including after an adult site ban in France.
Also, it is important to parse what this statistic is — and is not. A spike in new accounts doesn’t necessarily mean sustained use. It can just be a lot of people trying to evade the restrictions. But in cases in which bans persist and protests remain, retention typically increases as people become accustomed to evading the blockade as part of their daily life.
Increase Of 8,000% In Nepal VPN Use Amid Internet Clampdown Protests
A High-Stakes Test for Digital Rights
Digital rights groups, like Access Now and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have long cautioned that broad platform bans are blunt objects: they can chill speech, reduce safety resources and interfere with economic activity. Small businesses, media outlets and creators rely heavily on social channels in Nepal both for sales and for outreach and reporting, collateral damage when access is cut.
There are also governance issues with the register-first model. Mandatory local representatives can make global platforms cooperate on harmful content, but also enable that local pressure. Absent clear standards, judicial review, and appeal procedures, registration systems become functionally equivalent to speech licencing.
Technically, authorities who aim to enforce a national ban have the decision of whether to escalate. Shutting down VPNs uses tactics such as IP blacklists and deep packet inspection, an arms race that can hurt network performance and mistakenly block businesses’ legit traffic. The broader the action, the greater the risk of widespread economic and social costs.
What to Watch Next
All eyes are on whether platforms register and whether the government outlines guardrails around demands for content moderation. A transparent regime with judicial oversight could help to lower tensions; an opaque one won’t, it will drive more people underground into circumvention and exacerbate the current unrest.
There’s also the matter of durability. Should the ban remain in place, Nepal could witness a permanent change in digital conduct as VPNs evolve from stopgap to standard. That in turn could make enforcement more difficult in a country where the authorities have devoted increasing resources to regulate the balance or silence public online sentiment, a contradiction that is at the heart of how modern information controls work.
For now, the 8,000% spike is the clearest datum around: a nationwide flight to the digital exits when the public square was sealed off. Whether policymakers and platforms can craft a workable route back to open access will dictate whether that number is a one-off surge — or the new baseline for Nepal’s internet.