The social network UpScrolled soars in popularity in the US due to complaints of censorship on TikTok

This boom comes after TikTok announced last Thursday a $14 billion deal to establish a US subsidiary of the platform – responsible for US data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurance – and thus avoid its ban in the US.

After the restructuring, some users accused the application of censoring political content, especially related to criticism of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or information about the protests in Minneapolis after the death of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old civilian, at the hands of officers last Saturday.

The singer Billie Eilish assured on Instagram on Monday that TikTok “is silencing people” and gave as an example the few views that a video by her brother, fellow musician Finneas O’Connell, had gotten. in which he criticized those who justified Pretti’s death.

Eighteen hours after publication, O’Connell’s video had 46,000 likes and 137,000 views on TikTok, a figure lower than her other recent posts, which have hundreds of thousands or millions of views.

However, TikTok attributed these issues to an outage in its data center, which has been impacting the app’s functionality.

Concern also grew when TikTok released an updated privacy policy that allows the app to track users’ GPS coordinates, among other things.

The suspicion of users also points to the figure of Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle and new “guardian” of the TikTok algorithm in the US.

Ellison – a known ally of US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and tycoon Elon Musk – now has significant influence over the platform’s content moderation and data security through the new entity TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.

UpScrolled, which is reminiscent of a combination of Instagram and

According to Sensor Tower, another marketing intelligence firm, As of Tuesday, UpScrolled had been downloaded approximately 400,000 times in the United States and 700,000 times globally since its launch in June 2025.

“They appeared so fast that our servers crashed. Frustrating? Yes. Exciting? Also. We are a small team that is building what the big technology companies stopped doing. Right now we are working on caffeine to be able to keep up with the pace that you yourselves have set. Be patient,” the Australian company wrote in X.

The Australian app is described as an “uncensored” platform with “no hidden blocks.” She has been highly critical of TikTok, Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) and X for “censoring voices, applying biased moderation and hiding content behind algorithms.”

“Censored on other platforms? Not here. UpScrolled is the social platform where all voices have the same power. No covert censorship. No algorithmic manipulations. No paid favoritism. Only authentic connection where your content reaches the people who matter most,” the social network indicated on its website.

Its founder and CEO, Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian Issam Hijazi, explained on the website that UpScrolled began with a simple observation: “Social media had stopped being social. Algorithms replaced genuine connection with engagement tactics. Authentic voices were drowned out, while clickbait and algorithmic tricks dominated the feeds. Communities struggled to stay connected, limited by covert censorship and selective censorship.”

“We do not promote agendas, neither political, nor commercial, nor of any other type. Our rules are clear and applied uniformly. Our classification is transparent, our decisions are responsible and influence brings responsibility,” the company highlighted on its website.

UpScrolled isn’t the only app seeing a surge in users following TikTok’s restructuring. Skylight, an alternative to TikTok based on open source technology, claimed to have surpassed 380,000 registrations.