In the wake of TikTok’s change of ownership in the US last week, some users are looking for alternative platforms. An application that is gaining traction is UpScrolleda social network committed to remaining impartial to political agendas. The app is currently ranked 12th overall in Apple’s App Store and second in the social category.
UpScrolled combines familiar features from Instagram and X, allowing users to share photos, videos and text posts, discover new content and send instant messages.
The app was founded last year by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist, with the goal of giving users a place to “freely express their thoughts, share moments and connect with others,” application 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 in the hands of people – not 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 rethinking 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 Androidis facing a wave of new users, but says it’s scaling to keep up with demand.
According to data from the market information provider AppfiguresUpScrolled saw about 41,000 downloads between Thursday, the day the TikTok deal was finalized, and Saturday, accounting for nearly a 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 US installations.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
13-15 October 2026
“Well, this is new … You showed up so fast that our servers ran out,” the company he wrote in a post at X. “Frustrating? Yes. Emotional? Also yes. We’re a small team building what Big Tech has ceased to be. Right now we’re scaling the caffeine to keep up with what you started. Hang in there. We’re doing it.”
The rise comes as TikTok announced last Thursday that it had signed an agreement with a group of non-Chinese investors to form a majority American-owned consortium to keep the social app operating in the U.S. TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance owns less than 20 percent of the new entity, while the company’s three managing investors — Oracle, the private equity firm, Silver, Silver, Silver e-ke. MGX — each owns a 15% stake. Some users worry that TikTok’s new American investors may have political allegiance to Trump.
After the takeover, some users accused the app of censorship of certain political content. This review included a handful of high-profile users, including Senator Chris Murphy and singer Billie Eilish, who raised concerns that TikTok was sending or limiting posts critical of ICE. In addition, some said they were unable to find information about the 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 affected the functionality of its app.
Concerns also grew when TikTok released an updated privacy policy that allows the app to track users’ GPS coordinates, among other things. This has led some to encourage users to delete the app in favor of alternatives, with UpScrolled being one of the popular choices, largely due to promise not to shadowban anyone and give “every post a fair chance to be seen”.
UpScrolled isn’t the only app to see an increase in users after the acquisition. Skylight, a TikTok alternative based on open-source technology, says it has now surpassed 380,000 sign-ups and counting.
