TikTok users are flocking to UpScrolled in response to the new American owners
TikTok competitor UpScrolled has soared up the Apple App Store after users started turning to the new platform in droves. According to the social media sensation, many are looking for alternatives to TikTok after the new American owners were officially installed this week, with the expected algorithm changes raising questions about what content American TikTok users will be shown.
UpScrolled unexpectedly climbed into the top 10 of Apple’s, UK, and Australian App Stores on Sunday, and is now the second free app to rank in the former two – while TikTok doesn’t even crack the top 25.
App Store chart at time of writing.
Credit: Mashable screen / App Store
The app’s influx of new users overwhelmed its servers over the weekend. “Crazy load on our servers. Very exciting!” UpScrolled founder and CEO Issam Hijazi posted on the platform on Sunday. “Sorry for the glitches and issues, we are increasing our capacity to handle the load. We expect things to be more stable in the next 12-24 hours.”
Credit: Mashable screenshot / UpScrolled
Launched in 2025 by Hijazi as an alternative to social networks like TikTok and Instagram, UpScrolled allows users to share photos, videos, and text posts, and features a chronological feed of the accounts you follow. There’s also a feed, which UpScrolled orders content by likes, comments, and reshares, “as well as random touches to ensure every post has a chance to be seen.”
The platform said it is developing additional feeds that could use AI to recommend content based on your past behavior. However, UpScrolled says such features will be “accessible, fair, and transparent” in how they work.
The TikTok deal adds new American owners. Here’s what this means for users.
“We exist to restore justice to social media. Every voice deserves real access and equal treatment. No shadowbans, no hiding, no paid selection – ever,” UpScrolled’s mission statement reads. “We don’t push agendas – political, commercial, or otherwise. Our rules are clear and applied equally. Our standards are transparent, our decisions are responsible, and the impact is proportionate.”
Mashable Trend Report
So, why are users flocking to UpScrolled?
The interest in UpScrolled significantly follows TikTok’s announcement last Friday that its US operations have been taken over by a new American joint venture. TikTok’s new US ownership has raised fears about censorship on the platform, compounded by the blackout crisis that immediately followed the change of hands.
Notably, US lawmakers have previously accused TikTok of pushing pro-Palestinian content to users, citing this as one of their reasons for supporting a ban on the app in the country. The new owners of TikTok, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, revealed that they will retrain and update its recommendation algorithm, and control the rating of US content.
Meta’s assessment of Palestinian content is ‘systematic,’ Human Rights Watch finds
Some TikTok users have also expressed privacy concerns about minor changes to TikTok’s terms of service, which now say the app can collect precise location data without you logging out. Still, many people who moved to UpScrolled, who posted about it online, cited other platforms that were allegedly censored for pro-Palestinian content as the reason, some saying suppression of anti-ICE sentiment. TikTok itself said it was investigating claims of the name “Epstein” disappearing from direct messages, but said it was not intentionally withholding the name of the convicted sex offender.
UpScrolled founder Hijazi has expressed unequivocal support for Palestine, creating the app in late 2023 as a response to online discourse and “selective censorship” on social media. Based in Australia, the app is officially launched in mid-2025 and counts pro-Palestine organizations such as Tech for Palestine and Watermelon Pictures among its partners. Hijazi himself is Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian, and has expressed concern about censorship of pro-Palestinian content by major tech companies.
“Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, is a great contributor to friends [of the Israeli Defence Force] needy,” Hijazi said, speaking at ArabCon 2025 last September. “And that tells you something. If that person, who is a friend [Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel as a whole will own 80 percent of TikTok going forward, and when Netanyahu himself says the importance of using TikTok and X to spread their story, that tells you a lot. “
Oracle is one of the new owners of TikTok in the US, holding a 15 percent stake in the joint venture, while senior vice president Kenneth Glueck sits on the board of directors. It is also responsible for storing and protecting the data of US TikTok users.
As such, many pro-Palestinian TikTok users are now looking at UpScrolled as an attractive alternative.
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The sudden increase in interest in UpScrolled reminds us of X users’ search for alternatives like BlueSky after Elon Musk took control of the microblogging platform in late 2022. Thousands of users fled X in the following months, pocketing the app’s revenue as advertisers took them with them. Recently, many TikTok users have turned to Rednote, known as Xiaohongshu, when it looks like it will be banned in the US.
