UpScrolled Sees Surge in Downloads After TikTok U.S. Ownership Deal

Following TikTok’s change in U.S. ownership last week, several users have begun exploring alternative social platforms. One app drawing increased attention is UpScrolled, a social network that says it operates independently of political influence. The app has climbed to 12th place overall in Apple’s App Store rankings and currently sits second in the social networking category.

UpScrolled combines elements familiar to users of Instagram and X, allowing people to post photos, videos, and text updates, discover new content, and communicate through direct messages.

The platform was launched last year by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist, with the stated goal of offering users a space to “freely express thoughts, share moments, and connect with others,” according to the app’s website. The company says it is working to build a platform controlled by its users rather than by opaque algorithms or external interests.

“UpScrolled is the foundation for a digital ecosystem that puts power back into the hands of the people — not corporations,” Hijazi said in a statement published on the company’s website. “It’s more than an alternative to Meta, X, or TikTok. It’s a rethinking of social media as a place where creators, communities, and businesses can operate independently with transparency, accountability, and control.”

The app is available on both iOS and Android and has been working to scale its infrastructure as new users join at a rapid pace.

Data from market intelligence firm Appfigures shows that UpScrolled recorded roughly 41,000 downloads between Thursday — the day TikTok finalised its U.S. ownership deal — and Saturday. That figure represents nearly one-third of the app’s total installs. Since Thursday, UpScrolled has averaged about 14,000 downloads per day, a 2,850% increase.

Overall, the app has been downloaded approximately 140,000 times, including around 75,000 installs in the United States.

“Well, this is new … You showed up so fast our servers tapped out,” the company wrote in a post on X. “Frustrating? Yes. Emotional? Also yes. We’re a tiny team building what Big Tech stopped being. Right now we’re scaling on caffeine to keep up with what YOU started. Bear with us. We’re on it.”

The growth follows TikTok’s announcement last Thursday that it had finalised a deal with a group of non-Chinese investors to create a majority American-owned joint venture that would allow the app to continue operating in the U.S. Under the new structure, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, owns less than 20% of the entity. The three managing investors — Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment company MGX — each hold 15% stakes. Some users have raised concerns that the new U.S. investors may have political ties to former President Donald Trump.

After the ownership shift, some users accused TikTok of potentially limiting or censoring certain political content. Those claims were echoed by several high-profile figures, including Senator Chris Murphy and musician Billie Eilish, who suggested the app was suppressing posts critical of ICE. Others reported difficulty searching for information related to ongoing protests in Minneapolis following the killing of Alex Pretti by border patrol agents.

TikTok has said those problems were caused by an ongoing data centre outage that affected the app’s functionality.

Additional concern emerged after TikTok updated its privacy policy to allow the collection of users’ GPS location data, among other information. That change prompted some users to encourage others to delete the app and seek alternatives. UpScrolled emerged as one such option, in part because of its pledge not to shadowban users and to give every post an equal opportunity to be seen.

UpScrolled is not alone in seeing increased interest. Skylight, another TikTok alternative built on open-source technology, has also reported strong growth, saying it has surpassed 380,000 sign-ups and continues to add users.