JTA — Spooked by the deal finalized last week to sell part of TikTok to a United States investor group, some users have sought alternatives to the wildly popular social media platform.

Many are turning to UpScrolled, an app founded last year by a Palestinian tech entrepreneur who has promoted it as an alternative to mainstream social media outlets that he claims have silenced pro-Palestinian voices.

UpScrolled has surged to become the most-downloaded social media platform in Apple’s app store — and it has also been flooded with antisemitic and anti-Israel content, including expressions of gratitude that it permits such material.

“Thanks for this app. Let’s hope it continues to grow. It is terrifying how much control zionists have over all of our media. We are rapidly losing our freedoms,” wrote one user in the comments of UpScrolled’s post announcing it had reached 1 million users.

The app’s creator, Issam Hijazi, was born in Jordan and lives in Australia. He says 60 members of his family died in the Gaza war, which he said had changed his perspective on his work nearly two decades into his tech career.

“Since the genocide happened, and is still happening, it changed everything in me: my perspective to life, to work, to what I want to look for, and I felt I was complicit by working for these big techs,” Hijazi said in September at ArabCon, a conference held by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, Michigan.

Echoing allegations made by some human rights NGOs and activists, Hijazi said he believed “shadow-banning,” or suppressing the visibility of accounts, was common for pro-Palestinian social media users on multiple platforms.

“I was one of those users. I was posting about what’s happening in the genocide,” he said. “I’ve got friends all over Europe, the US, and everywhere [and I was] asking them, do you see this content? They say, what content?”

Social media independence, Hijazi said, was essential for the Palestinian cause.

“It’s great to go out in the street and protest; it’s great to gather and talk and share........

© The Times of Israel