Within hours of the deal for TikTok’s U.S. operations being announced last week, Issam Hijazi noticed a big uptick in users to his social media platform UpScrolled. That stream of disgruntled users fleeing TikTok over censorship concerns turned into a flood this week, crashing UpScrolled’s servers.
UpScrolled, launched last July, supports text posts, photos, short-form videos, stories and other features. It claims to be a platform with “no censorship” and “no shadowbans.” On Monday, it ranked among the top 10 free apps on Apple’s App Store, and No. 2 among social network apps. It hit more than 1 million users from just 40,000.
“You all showed up so fast our servers tapped out,” UpScrolled said in an Instagram post on Monday. “We’re a tiny team building an alternative to the platforms that stopped listening to you. Right now, we’re scaling and running on caffeine to keep up with what YOU started. Bear with us. We’re on it.”
UpScrolled is backed by the Tech for Palestine incubator, an advocacy project that helps fund tech initiatives to support the Palestinian cause. Hijazi, a Palestinian-Australian, spoke to Rest of World on the sidelines of a conference on Saturday.
It’s so common for “anti-censorship” to be code for “Nazi-friendly” that I’m immediately suspicious of any platform that uses that as a selling point.
Well, plus the fact that it’s a closed source nonfederated system, so it’s just a case of “from the frying pan into another, slightly cooler frying pan”
It’s so common for “anti-censorship” to be code for “Nazi-friendly” that I’m immediately suspicious of any platform that uses that as a selling point.
i don’t know if it’s a function of the ideological bent or just because the gigantic influx of users has totally swamped their moderation, but yes it does have problems with fascists as of writing
Gee whiz, imagine my surprise
Edit: they’re ostensibly banning trans people (“ostensibly” because it’s not like I can verify the claims, not that I don’t believe them), so I guess the “platforms shouldn’t get to decide who exists” platform has no problem deciding trans people “shouldn’t exist”?
Same thing with Rumble, the supposedly censor free YouTube alternative that’s actually a maga cesspool.
Yeah, I tried to give it an honest shot. Made an account and opened the Discover page. The very first post was an antisemitic “the Jews are secretly running the world” conspiracy theory post. Whatever, it’s inevitable on an anti-censorship app. Not a great first impression, but I’m willing to shrug it off as a fluke.
Then three or four posts later, there was a blatant “Hitler was right about the Jews and the holocaust wasn’t enough” post, made by an account that was dedicated to glorifying Hitler. Again, this is on the Discover page for a brand new account. Meaning it’s what the algorithm is serving to users by default.
I made another comment about it (with screenshots) a day or two ago. Here is the link.
That’s… that’s terrible. Like I replied to that just a while ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if this leads to further radicalisation of Americans if they do actually end up using UpScrolled.
Putting my tinfoil hat on, this actually feels like a reich-wing ploy
Yeah, my linked comment was actually in response to an earlier comment I made, basically saying “this app’s explosive rise in popularity feels astroturfed.” I caught a couple of downvotes for that original comment. But the more I tried using it, the worse it got. It will 100% contribute to the normalization of Nazi viewpoints.
In this case it seems quite reasonable for their stance to stem from the censorship of posts about palestine on popular social media platforms. Agreed we shouldn’t settle for any more privately owned social media regardless though.
Building a Nazi bar to make sure pro-Palestinian voices are heard seems like a suboptimal solution, though
For sure, Nazis (or their speech patterns anyway) do seem to be specifically against the policy as well though
Does “no censorship” mean “no moderation”?
The intention may be good, but there is the fediverse and a large set of complete, polished and battle tested open source solutions, why not build on top of that?
Anti-censorship is a dog whistle for nazi bar. This one is already garbage.
It is not enough to talk of an alternative if the underlying structure reinforces centralization. This is so especially when federation protocols are active and seeking adoption.
