Gen Z turns Discord from gaming chatrooms into protest hubs

Recent events in Nepal and the United States highlight a striking shift: young people are increasingly turning to Discord as their preferred communication platform. Once a niche tool for gamers, it has evolved into a digital town hall, a strategy room, and in some cases, a refuge from scrutiny or censorship.

The platform’s popularity signals a larger movement towards decentralised, community-owned spaces. And this has implications for marketers, brands, and the news industry alike.

Discord describes itself as “a voice, video, and text communication platform used by over two hundred million people to hang out and play games with their friends.” Unlike Facebook or Instagram, it is not a broadcast-led platform. Nor is it a public forum like Reddit. Instead, Discord’s value lies in intimacy: smaller groups, invite-only access, and conversations that feel personal rather than performative.

As Jason Citron, Discord’s founder, once told The Verge, “Discord is a platform where you can converse and spend time with your friends around things you have in common, like video games or perhaps your favourite anime series.” That principle has since expanded far beyond fandoms.

Nepal’s ‘virtual parliament’ and the Charlie Kirk case

In Nepal, political turmoil saw Gen Z citizens repurposing Discord as a ‘virtual parliament’. Here, young people debated leadership, coordinated civic action, and even rallied around selecting Sushila Karki as their new leader.

Across the world, in the US, the shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk thrust Discord into headlines for darker reasons. Claims emerged that the suspect had used the platform to plan aspects of the attack.

Discord denied these allegations. However, the case underscored how its private, semi-anonymous design complicates oversight and fuels perception challenges.

Discord’s architecture explains its appeal — and its risks. Users build or join ‘servers’, which are community spaces with multiple channels for text, voice, video, and screen sharing.

These servers are often private, moderated locally rather than centrally, and shaped by member rules. Pseudonymous identities are common, reducing the pressure of real-name environments. For hobbyists, study groups, activists, and protest organisers alike, the model is ideal. For regulators, it presents blind spots.

The numbers behind the momentum

Globally, Discord has grown from around 300 million registered users in 2020 to over 500 million in 2025. India ranks among the top five markets for Discord traffic, alongside the USA, Brazil, Canada, and the Philippines.

Much of this growth is driven by mobile-first users who rely on it for gaming, fandom communities, and increasingly, for study groups and political discussion. The drivers for this growth are clear, and topping the list is distrust of mainstream platforms. Allegations of censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and government restrictions have pushed users towards less regulated spaces.

Gen Z users seek community autonomy and Discord offers just that. Its servers allow admins to set their own norms and culture, a sharp contrast to centralised platforms. The platform’s real-time features ensure a seamless mix of text, voice, video, and streaming, which is well suited for dynamic collaboration.

And then there is VPN adoption. In protest-heavy environments, youth populations have turned to VPNs to bypass geo-restrictions. One protest wave saw an 8,000% spike in VPN use, much of it to sustain access to Discord.

But the very design that empowers users also raises alarms. Inconsistent moderation, difficulties in oversight, and exclusion of those without reliable internet or devices limit its accessibility and create vulnerabilities.

When opinions outpace facts

For younger generations, Discord’s rise is inseparable from their declining reliance on traditional media. Newspapers and TV once carried authority as the ‘first draft of history’. Today, many see them as slow, biased, or out of step with lived experience.

Instead of waiting for a morning edition or primetime debate, young people log into Discord servers where commentary comes instantly — often from peers who ‘sound like them’.

The problem is structural: Discord collapses the line between news and opinion. What circulates fastest are hot takes, memes, and peer commentary rather than verified facts. The checks of editorial oversight, fact verification, or even a culture of journalistic responsibility are largely absent.

This produces echo chambers where communities negotiate their own ‘truths’. Dissenting voices can be removed at the click of a moderator.

One server’s gospel can be another’s conspiracy. Social media blurred journalism and commentary, but Discord intensifies it by keeping discourse semi-private and shielded from external correction. What feels like empowerment is also fragmentation: one Discord server’s ‘truth’ may be another’s conspiracy theory.

A double-edged shift for democracies and brands

For democracies, the displacement of traditional media by Discord and similar platforms creates two intertwined challenges. First, verified information must now compete with raw opinion, memes, or half-baked exposés.

Second, the erosion of shared facts makes consensus-building nearly impossible. Citizens living in parallel informational realities struggle to even agree on what constitutes a problem.

For marketers and brand communicators, Discord’s rise signals both risk and opportunity. Decentralised, community-owned spaces attract highly engaged young audiences who are sceptical of traditional advertising.

The format allows brands to participate in communities more directly, but it also demands sensitivity: heavy-handed messaging risks rejection or ridicule. The rules of engagement are written by the communities themselves.

If Facebook and X taught us how quickly misinformation can spread, Discord would teach us how quickly entire alternative realities can consolidate.

Discord’s popularity illustrates the hunger for community-driven spaces. But it also highlights the enduring value of institutions that practise verification, balance, and accountability.

While young people may dismiss newspapers and TV as outdated, the absence of editorial standards on platforms like Discord raises a clear question: what happens when societies lose shared reference points?

Traditional media, despite its flaws, offers one thing Discord cannot — a commitment, however imperfect, to balance and verification. For brands and agencies, the lesson is not to abandon one for the other, but to understand the complementary roles they play. Discord may capture youth energy, but legacy media still anchors trust and shared reality.

The paradox is striking: a platform born for gamers now hosts conversations about politics, protest, and national leadership. Discord has, in some places, replaced newsrooms as the arena where events are debated in real time.

But that substitution should concern us. A platform for gamers has replaced news and is now used for the exchange of ideas for the toppling of governments; shouldn’t we be worried?

- Vineeta Dwivedi is an associate professor of Organisation and Leadership Studies at the SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR). Views are personal.