Spooked by the deal finalized last week to sell part of TikTok to a U.S. investor group, some users have sought alternatives to the wildly popular social media platform.
Many are turning to UpScrolled, an app founded last year by a Palestinian tech entrepreneur who has promoted it as an alternative to mainstream social media outlets that he claims have silenced pro-Palestinian voices.
UpScrolled has surged to become the most-downloaded social media platform in Apple’s app store — and it has also been flooded with antisemitic and anti-Israel content, including expressions of gratitude that it permits such material.
“Thanks for this app. Let’s hope it continues to grow. It is terrifying how much control zionists have over all of our media. We are rapidly losing our freedoms,” wrote one user in the comments of UpScrolled’s post announcing it had reached 1 million users.
The app’s creator, Issam Hijazi, was born in Jordan and lives in Australia. He says 60 members of his family died in the Gaza war, which he said had changed his perspective on his work nearly two decades into his tech career.
“Since the genocide happened, and is still happening, it changed everything in me: my perspective to life, to work, to what I want to look for, and I felt I was complicit by working for these big techs,” Hijazi said in September at ArabCon, a conference held by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, Michigan.
Echoing allegations made by some human rights NGOs and activists, Hijazi said he believed “shadow-banning,” or suppressing the visibility of accounts, was common for pro-Palestinian social media users on multiple platforms.
“I was one of those users. I was posting about what’s happening in the genocide,” he said. “I’ve got friends all over Europe, the U.S., and everywhere [and I was] asking them, do you see this content? They say, what content?”
Social media independence, Hijazi said, was essential for the Palestinian cause. “It’s great to go out in the street and protest; it’s great to gather and talk and share and all that,” he said. “But if we don’t become independent, digitally, speaking with platforms, with products, and then help one another to grow these platforms, we will not be able to get far.”
That message is resonating now that an investor group led by Larry Ellison, a prominent pro-Israel entrepreneur, has reached a deal to purchase the U.S. operations of TikTok. The deal was forced under U.S. law and supported by major Jewish organizations including Jewish Federations of North America, which cited antisemitism on the platform as a reason that change was needed.
An increasing number of users are downloading UpScrolled, which said earlier this month that it had about 90,000 regular users. On Thursday morning, Hijazi announced the platform had reached one million users.
On Wednesday, UpScrolled ranked second among overall AppStore downloads on Apple devices behind ChatGPT. Among social networking apps, it ranked first.
“Now that Tiktok has fallen officially under control of Zionist billionaire and MAGA oligarch Larry Ellison, who bought this app on behalf of Israel to censor pro Palestinian speech and speech criticizing the US and Israeli regimes. I need you guys to switch apps,” said the controversial pro-Palestinian TikTok influencer Guy Christensen in a post on TikTok. “At least download this app called UpScrolled, it’s a new social media platform, no censorship, no ownership by billionaires who put their interests and biases onto you to control you.”
Within minutes of downloading UpScrolled, a social media platform that has rocketed to popularity this week following a deal to sell part of TikTok to a group of U.S. investors, users are likely to see antisemitic and anti-Israel content.
“This is a safe space to openly say, I stand with Khamenei, Hezbollah, Houthis, & Hamas #ResistanceIsNotTerrorism,” read one post featured Wednesday on the app’s “discover” page, which allows users to find new accounts to follow.
“Happy WP Wednesday! All kikes please face the wall. #fuckthejews,” wrote another.
Elsewhere, users promoted Holocaust denial and alleged that Israel carried out the 9/11 terror attacks.
One user with a photo of Hitler as their profile picture responded to the announcement that UpScrolled had reached 1 million users by saying, “Thank you for allowing free speech without censorship. F—k Tiktok and Twitter.”
Even as UpScrolled markets itself as “creating an environment that is authentic, unfiltered, and equitable for all,” it also claims that it is not a “free-for-all.”
“UpScrolled does not tolerate hate speech, propaganda, or bad-faith behaviour, but it also refuses to silence voices quietly or without explanation,” reads a blog entry on the UpScrolled website. “It is not a free-for-all; it is a space built on dignity, accountability, and respect.”
How content is moderated on social media has been a longstanding concern for Jewish watchdogs on alert for antisemitism online. This week, the group CyberWell released its annual State of Online Antisemitism report which found that roughly half of antisemitic content was removed across the platforms it analyzed. The platform with the lowest rate of removal was X, whose owner Elon Musk has pledged a hands-off approach to moderation; the highest was on TikTok, which took down nearly 90% of antisemitic posts.
UpScrolled’s website says the platform prohibits certain material, including “violence,” defined as “threats, glorification of harm, or support for terrorist/violent groups,” and “harassment and hate,” which included “bullying, targeted abuse, or attacks based on race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, or similar traits.”
The platform also has an in-app reporting button to flag posts, profiles, or messages, according to UpScrolled’s rules and policies page.
In response to a request from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for information on how the platform monitors hate speech, UpScrolled spokesperson Gabriella Bord said its moderators had been unable to keep up with the influx of content this week.
“Our content moderation hasn’t been able to keep up with the massive rise of users this week,” wrote Bord in a statement. “We’re working with digital rights experts to grow our Trust & Safety team and are beefing up our content moderation to prevent this. We apologise to all impacted users, thank you for being part of Upscrolled.”
For some on the site now — and for Hijazi — the relative paucity of moderation could be a boon, not a bug.
“We are no longer depending on unethical social media platforms,” Hijazi wrote in a November post on Instagram. “UpScrolled is a platform where your activist content will not be censored. No matter if you speak about Palestine, Sudan, climate, inclusivity or any other topic.”
Or as a new user said in response to the latest post, about the surge in downloads, “In this app, I feel right at home. I can write and speak freely and comfortable without using symbols, wordplay, or circumvention tools to bypass Zionist algorithms.”
