TikTok users flock to UpScrolled in response to new U.S. owners
TikTok competitor UpScrolled has climbed the Apple App Store rankings after users began switching to the new platform in droves. According to social media sentiment, many are looking for alternatives to TikTok after new US owners officially took over this week, with expected algorithm changes raising questions about what content will be shown to US TikTok users.
UpScrolled unexpectedly climbed into the top 10 of Apple’s App Stores in the US, UK and Australia on Sunday, and is now the second free app ranked in the top two – while TikTok doesn’t even make it out of the top 25.
App Store charts at the time of writing.
Credit: screenshot Mashable / App Store
The app’s influx of new users overwhelmed its servers over the weekend. “Crazy load on our servers. So exciting!” UpScrolled founder and CEO Issam Hijazi posted on the platform on Sunday. “Sorry for any errors and issues, we are increasing our capacity to handle the load. We expect things to become more stable in the next 12-24 hours.”
Credit: screenshot Mashable / UpScrolled
Launched in 2025 by Hijazi as an alternative to social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, UpScrolled allows users to share photos, videos and text messages, and features a timeline feed for the accounts you follow. There’s also a discovery feed, which UpScrolled says ranks content by likes, comments and shares, “plus a touch of randomization to ensure every post always has a chance of being seen.”
The platform said it is developing more feeds that can use AI to recommend content based on your past behavior. However, UpScrolled claims that these features will be “voluntary, fair and transparent” in their operation.
TikTok deal adds new US owners. Here’s what this means for users.
“We exist to put fairness back at the center of social media. Every voice deserves real reach and equal treatment. No shadowbans, no hidden throttling, no paid favoritism – ever,” reads UpScrolled’s mission statement. “We don’t impose agendas – political, business or otherwise. Our rules are clear and applied equally. Our rankings are explainable, our decisions accountable, and with influence comes responsibility.”
Mashable Trend Report
So why are users flocking to UpScrolled?
The interest in UpScrolled follows in particular the announcement made last Friday by TikTok of the takeover of its American activities by a new joint venture with majority American capital. TikTok’s new US ownership sparked fears about censorship on the platform, which were compounded by an outage issue that quickly followed the change of hands.
Notably, US lawmakers have previously accused TikTok of serving pro-Palestinian content to users, citing this as one of the reasons they support banning the app in the country. TikTok’s new owners, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, said they would retrain and update its recommendation algorithm and take control of content moderation in the United States.
Meta’s Censorship of Palestinian Content Is ‘Systemic,’ Human Rights Watch Says
Some TikTok users have also expressed privacy concerns over relatively minor changes to TikTok’s terms of service, which now state that the app may collect precise location data unless you opt out. Despite this, many people who have switched to UpScrolled and are posting online about it have cited other platforms’ alleged censorship of pro-Palestinian content as the reason, with some further claiming the suppression of anti-ICE sentiment. TikTok itself said it was investigating claims that the word “Epstein” disappeared in direct messages, but said it was not deliberately censoring the convicted sex offender’s name.
UpScrolled founder Hijazi has expressed his unequivocal support for Palestine, creating the app in late 2023 in response to online discourse and “selective censorship” on social media platforms. Based in Australia, the app officially launched in mid-2025 and lists pro-Palestinian organizations such as Tech for Palestine and Watermelon Pictures among its partners. Hijazi himself is Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian and has expressed concerns about censorship of pro-Palestinian content by big tech companies.
“Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, is the largest contributor to Friends [of the Israeli Defence Force] charity,” Hijazi said, speaking at ArabCon 2025 last September. “And that tells you something. If this person, who is friends with [Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel in general will own 80% of TikTok, and if Netanyahu himself emphasizes the importance of using TikTok and X to broadcast his speech, that tells you a lot. »
Oracle is one of the new owners of TikTok in the United States, holding a 15% stake in the joint venture, while its executive vice president, Kenneth Glueck, sits on the board of directors. It is also responsible for storing and securing the data of TikTok’s American users.
As such, many TikTok users who support Palestine now view UpScrolled as an attractive alternative.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or has been deleted.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or has been deleted.
The sudden surge of interest in UpScrolled is reminiscent 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, reducing the app’s revenue as advertisers also left. Most recently, many TikTok users turned to Rednote, aka Xiaohongshu, as it looked like a US ban was going to be put in place.
