• by Colin Kirkland , 4 hours ago

UpScrolled, a short-form video sharing app, has risen to the top of Apple’s app store following new ownership of competitor platform TikTok’s U.S. business by a consortium of investors handpicked by the Trump administration. 

On Thursday, when UpScrolled hit the top slot on the Apple app store’s free apps list, founder Issam Hijazi posted on X that the app had surpassed one million users, marking an increase of 850,000 new users over just a few days. 

UpScrolled, which Hijazi created in 2023, was built on the ethos of “fairness,” according to its website, which claims that every post on the app “has a fair chance to be seen” as there are “no shadowbands, no hidden throttling, no pay-to-lay favoritism.”

The website also adds that the only posts that UpScrolled restricts are those in violation of the platform’s community guidelines, containing illegal activity, hate speech, bullying and/or harassment.

Unlike on TikTok, which uses an algorithm to suggest videos to users based on various personal data points across how they’ve engaged with the app over time, UpScrolled’s following feed lists videos chronologically, whereas its discover feed sorts videos by likes, comments and reshares. These methods, according to the company’s website, provide all posts a better chance to be seen on the app with more algorithmic transparency.

Social media users in the U.S. are flocking to UpScrolled – a platform that has called TikTok, Meta and X out for “censoring voices, enforcing biased moderation, and hiding content behind algorithms” – as censorship and tracking concerns surround TikTok’s new U.S. entity. 

Last week, TikTok announced that it had closed a deal to transition its U.S. business to TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, a group of investors which includes U.S.-based tech company Oracle, a tech company run by Larry Ellison, a Republican megadonor and close ally to President Donald Trump.

Days after TikTok’s U.S. takeover, criticism erupted from celebrities, creators, and politicians, who claimed that the platform was silencing their posts about the recent ICE raids and protests, specifically in Minneapolis, where Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by ICE agents.

Beyond content moderation concerns, the TikTok app has also faced outages for thousands of users. On Sunday, TikTok users in the U.S. had trouble posting videos, were unable to track their follower count changes, and some video uploads showed no views, according to app tracker Downdetector. 

As a result, competitor apps have begun to report sudden boosts in user numbers. Skylight Social, a vertical video-sharing app backed by investor Mark Cuban, reached 380,000 total users by adding 95,000 monthly active users in just the last month.

However, UpScrolled has dominated the app store, placing 26 spots above TikTok in the U.S.