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 into it substitute Platforms. One app that is gaining traction is Scrolled upa social network that pledges to remain neutral to political agendas. The app currently ranks 12th overall in the Apple App Store and second in the Social Networking category.

Scrolled up It 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 Word. Application website. The team behind the app says they are “building a platform that is 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 says in a statement on the UpScrolled website. “It’s more than just an alternative to Meta,

The app is available on both iOS and Androidis experiencing a surge in new users, but says it is working to expand to keep up with demand.

According to data from the market information provider Application formsUpScrolled saw nearly 41,000 downloads between Thursday, the day the TikTok deal was finalized, and Saturday, accounting for nearly a third of permanent 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.

“Well, this is new…it came out so fast, our servers stopped working,” the company said He wrote in another On bluesky. “Frustrating? Yes. Emotional? Also yes. We’re a small team building what big tech companies have stopped building. Right now, we’re ramping up our caffeine intake to keep up with what you started. Bear with us. We’re working on it.”

The increase comes as TikTok announced this last Thursday I signed a deal With a group of non-Chinese investors to form a majority-US-owned joint venture to keep the social app running in the US, TikTok’s parent company, Chinese ByteDance, 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.

After the acquisition, some users accused the app of Potentially censoring certain political content. This review included a handful of notable 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 Constant data center outageswhich affected the functionality of the application.

Concerns also increased when TikTok issued an updated privacy policy Allows The app for tracking 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 of the popular options, largely because it Promise not to shadowban Anyone and give “every post a fair chance to be featured.”

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’s now out More than 380,000 subscriptions And it continues to grow.