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A new player is making waves in the world of social media. UpScrolled, an alternative platform created by Palestinian technologist Issam Hijazi, has shaken the space normally dominated by tech giants such as TikTok, Instagram and X

It has risen quickly to become the most downloaded social media app on Apple’s App Store in the US, UK and Australia — it ranks number eight in Pakistan.

The app, which says it operates without “shadowbans” and “censorship”, was built in the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza, when social media control over posts about the war began to tighten.

In Hijazi’s own words, “I was getting my news from independent journalists and activists online and across social media platforms and I myself was sharing and reposting also. But as the months dragged on, every conceivable metric — death toll, time, destruction of buildings, number of hostages — skyrocketed and the only decreasing metric was online visibility. The truth was essentially being silenced or throttled.”

He said he felt a pressure to amplify the voices of his people. which is what drove him to quit his corporate job and create the platform.

With a layout similar to Instagram, UpScrolled offers users Following and Discover feeds. According to the platform’s website, the Following feed is sorted chronologically, allowing users to decide what they want to see from the creators they follow and the Discover feed is ordered by popularity, with some decay over time and a little bit of randomness to keep things fresh.

The website also says the platform does not push an agenda, “political, commercial, or otherwise,” and that moderation of posts that violate community guidelines and break the law will be human-led, transparent and apolitical.

Hijazi said UpScrolled isn’t a new idea, it’s just a return to what social media was supposed to be, a place for “social connection”. “I want UpScrolled to be everyone’s platform. Politics spurred its creation, but its success lies in the diversity of its community and content… Ambitious? Maybe. Revolutionary? No,” he said about his creation.

He also said the platform was “self-built and self-financed” without any funding from venture capitalists and bigger tech firms. The app briefly went down on Monday after a surge of new users overwhelmed UpScrolled’s servers, the team said they were working to scale their setup accordingly.

The platform’s meteoric rise comes as TikTok’s US operations have been taken over by a majority American-owned venture, which the Council on American-Islamic Relations describes as pro-Israel. The think tank commended UpScrolled for “protecting free speech” amidst TikTok’s “censorship spree”.