Anti-Israel activists move to Palestinian-founded UpScrolled app after TikTok deal, citing content suppression

A growing number of anti-Israel activists on social media are moving from TikTok to a newer platform called UpScrolled after TikTok announced a recent investment deal involving a U.S. investor group led by businessman Larry Ellison.

Activists say the change is driven by concerns that TikTok is limiting the reach of their posts through what they describe as “shadow-banning,” a practice they claim suppresses content without formally removing it.

The UpScrolled app was launched in 2025 by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian activist who currently lives in Australia, and has already drawn more than one million users. Supporters of the platform frame it as an alternative space they believe is less moderated and more receptive to their political messaging.

“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,” one user wrote in a post promoting the platform.

Hijazi claims that 60 members of his extended family died during the Hamas-initiated Gaza war. Last September, he spoke at ArabCon, a conference organized by the human rights group, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, in Dearborn, Michigan.

“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.

Hijazi said he had been actively posting about the conflict and believed his content was being suppressed. When he asked friends in Europe and the U.S. whether they were seeing his posts, they told him they were not, which reinforced his perception that the material was not reaching a wider audience. He said this experience led him to pursue the creation of an alternative social media platform.

“It’s great to go out in the street and protest; it’s great to gather and talk and share and all that,” he said. “But if we don’t become independent, digitally, speaking with platforms, with products, and then help one another to grow these platforms, we will not be able to get far.”

Anti-Israel influencer Guy Christensen expressed similar views in a post on TikTok.

“Now that TikTok has fallen officially under the control of Zionist billionaire and MAGA oligarch Larry Ellison, who bought this app on behalf of Israel to censor pro-Palestinian speech and speech criticizing the US and Israeli regimes. I need you guys to switch apps,” Christensen wrote.

He urged his followers to “download this app called UpScrolled, it’s a new social media platform, no censorship, no ownership by billionaires who put their interests and biases onto you to control you.”

Furthermore, UpScrolled has recently seen a surge of anti-Israel and explicitly anti-Jewish content.

“This is a safe space to openly say, I stand with Khamenei, Hezbollah, Houthis, & Hamas #ResistanceIsNotTerrorism,” one anti-Israel activist wrote on UpScrolled on Wednesday.

“Happy WP Wednesday! All ki*es please face the wall. #f*ckthejews,” another wrote.

In November 2023, just one month after the Hamas Oct. 7 terror attack in southern Israel, Jewish celebrities Sacha Baron Cohen, Amy Schumer and Debra Messing jointly condemned TikTok for enabling the mass spread of antisemitism online.

In 2024, a trend often referred to as “TikTok Jihad” gained attention in Europe, as the platform was increasingly cited as being used to radicalize and recruit young Muslims in Europe and the West for extremist causes.