In the wake of TikTok’s U.S. ownership change last week, some users are seeking out alternative platforms. One app gaining traction is UpScrolled, a social network that pledges to remain impartial to political agendas. The app currently ranks 12th overall in Apple’s App Store and second in the social networking category.
UpScrolled blends familiar features from Instagram and X, letting users share photos, videos, and text posts, discover new content, and send direct messages.
The app was founded last year by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist, with the aim of giving users a place to “freely express thoughts, share moments, and connect with others,” according to the app’s website. The team behind the app says they’re “building a platform that belongs to the people who use it — not to hidden algorithms or outside agendas.”
“UpScrolled is the foundation for a digital ecosystem that puts power back into the hands of the people — not the corporations,” Hijazi said in a statement on UpScrolled’s website. “It’s more than just an alternative to Meta, X, or TikTok — it’s a reimagining of what social media should be: a space where creators, communities, and businesses thrive independently, with real control, transparency, and accountability.”
The app, available on both iOS and Android, is grappling with a surge of new users but says it’s scaling to keep up with the demand.
According to data from the market intelligence provider Appfigures, UpScrolled saw approximately 41,000 downloads between Thursday, the day the TikTok deal was finalized, and Saturday, accounting for nearly one-third of its lifetime installs. UpScrolled has seen an average of about 14,000 daily downloads since Thursday, representing a 2,850% increase in daily downloads.
In total, the app has been downloaded 140,000 times to date, with 75,000 of those being U.S.-based installs.
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“Well, this is new … You showed up so fast our servers tapped out,” the company wrote in a post on X. “Frustrating? Yes. Emotional? Also yes. We’re a tiny team building what Big Tech stopped being. Right now we’re scaling on caffeine to keep up with what YOU started. Bear with us. We’re on it.”
The surge comes as TikTok announced last Thursday that it signed a deal with a group of non-Chinese investors to form a majority American-owned joint venture to keep the social app operating in the U.S. TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance owns less than 20% of the new entity, while the venture’s three managing investors — Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment company MGX — each hold a 15% stake. Some users worry that TikTok’s new U.S. investors may have political allegiances to Trump.
Following the takeover, some users accused the app of potentially censoring certain political content. This criticism included a handful of high-profile users, including Senator Chris Murphy and singer Billie Eilish, who raised concerns that TikTok was suppressing or limiting posts criticizing ICE. Additionally, some said they were unable to search for information about ongoing protests in Minneapolis following the killing of Alex Pretti by border patrol agents.
However, TikTok attributed these issues to an ongoing data center outage, which has been impacting its app’s functionality.
Concerns also grew when TikTok released an updated privacy policy that allows the app to track users’ GPS coordinates, among other things. This led to some users encouraging people to delete the app in favor of alternatives, with UpScrolled being one of the popular choices, largely due to its promise to not shadowban anyone and give “every post a fair chance to be seen.”
UpScrolled isn’t the only app that’s seeing a surge in users following the takeover. Skylight, a TikTok alternative built on open source technology, says it has now topped over 380,000 sign-ups and is continuing to grow.
