Social network UpScrolled is seeing a surge in downloads after TikTok’s US acquisition

In the wake of TikTok’s ownership change in the US last week, some users are looking for alternative platforms. One app that has gained attention is UpScrolled, a social network that pledges to remain neutral toward political agendas. The app currently ranks 12th overall in the Apple App Store and second in the Social Networking category.

UpScrolled blends familiar features from Instagram and X, allowing users to share photos, videos, and text posts, discover new content, and send direct 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 ideas, share moments, and connect with others,” according to the app’s website. The team behind the app says they are “building a platform owned by the people who use it — not hidden algorithms or outside agendas.”

“UpScrolled is the foundation of a digital ecosystem that puts power back in the hands of people — not companies,” Hegazy said in a statement on the UpScrolled website. “It’s more than just an alternative to Meta,

The app, available on iOS and Android, is facing a wave of new users but says it is expanding to keep up with demand.

According to data from market intelligence provider Appfigures, UpScrolled saw nearly 41,000 downloads between Thursday, the day the TikTok deal was finalized, and Saturday, accounting for nearly a third of lifetime installs. UpScrolled has seen an average of 14,000 daily downloads since Thursday, representing a 2,850% increase in daily downloads.

In total, the app has been downloaded 140,000 times so far, of which 75,000 have been installed in the United States.

“Okay, this is new… It came out really fast. Our servers went down. Frustrating? Yes. Emotional? Also yes. We’re a small team building what big tech companies stopped building. Now we’re caffeinating to keep up with what they started. Bear with us. We’re working on it,” the company wrote in a post on X.

The increase 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 joint venture to keep the social app operating in the United States. ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, owns less than 20% of the new entity, while the project’s three managing investors – Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX – each have a 15% stake. Some users are concerned that TikTok’s new American investors may have political allegiances to Trump.

Following the acquisition, some users accused the app of potentially censoring certain political content. These criticisms included a group of prominent users, including Senator Chris Murphy and singer Billie Eilish, who raised concerns that TikTok was suppressing or limiting posts critical of ICE. Additionally, some said they were unable to search for information about the ongoing protests in Minneapolis following the killing of Alex Peretti by Border Patrol agents.

However, TikTok attributed these issues to the ongoing data center outage, which affected the app’s functionality.

Concerns also increased when TikTok issued an updated privacy policy allowing the app to track users’ GPS coordinates, among other things. This has led to some users encouraging people to delete the app in favor of alternatives, with UpScrolled being one popular choice, largely due to its promise to not ban anyone and give “every post a fair chance to be seen”.

UpScrolled is not the only app to see a significant increase in users after the acquisition. Skylight, a TikTok alternative built on open source technology, says it has now surpassed more than 380,000 registrations and continues to grow.