Balendra Shah’s Facebook page used to hold power to account. Now it holds power.

This essay was originally published as part of our weekly newsletter, Letter from Kathmandu. Sign up to receive this free newsletter in your inbox every Friday from The Kathmandu Post. On the morning of October 31, a day after plainclothes police entered several newsrooms and took journalists into custody, Prime Minister Balendra Shah posted on Facebook about mobile games.

Ludo and Callbreak, two of the world’s most downloaded games, were made in Nepal, he wrote , and his government would ease the rules for the gaming industry. It is one of 58 posts Shah has published on his official account since he was sworn in on March 27. This past week, I read all of them, along with more than 200 messages he posted as mayor of Kathmandu, and coded each one with the help of Claude AI’s Opus 5.5 model.

What I found is that Shah posts about twice a week, the same rate as in his last two years as mayor. Eight of his posts as prime minister went up after 9 pm. But one of the most significant changes is what Shah uses his Facebook page for as prime minister.