An Australian social media platform surged to millions of users amid global concern over censorship and Gaza. Yet its rise has been largely ignored by Australia’s media.

Mobile phones and social media apps – TikTok and Instagram in particular – have been vital tools in conveying the truth about Israel’s genocide in Gaza to a global audience. They were especially important in the context of Israel’s ban on international journalists entering the Strip, its targeted killing of Palestinian journalists, and the Western media’s tendency to either underreport or badly report Israel’s crimes. Thanks largely to these tools, the truth went viral.

It’s not surprising, then, that those with a vested interest in Israel’s ongoing impunity, and in controlling global narratives more broadly, are so eager to ensure that social media never plays such a role again. That effort is well underway, and there are troubling signs the censorship of traditional social media platforms will only worsen. Those pushing for greater censorship have been transparent about their intentions.

In September 2025, during a meeting with US influencers at Israel’s Consulate General in New York, Benjamin Netanyahu said:

“The weapons change over time…we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we engage, and the most important ones are on social media. And the most important purchase going on in the world is? TikTok. TikTok. Number one.”

Separately, at the Israel Hayom Summit on  December 2, 2025, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in relation to Gaza:

“..where were they [young people] getting their information? They were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok…that’s a serious problem, it’s a serious problem for democracy whether it’s Israel or the United States and it’s a serious problem for our young people.”

As Netanyahu and Clinton’s comments make clear, social media platforms are now major actors in international relations. They should, therefore, be taken seriously by scholars, political analysts and the traditional gatekeepers of ’the news’ – journalists at mainstream media organisations.

But don’t hold your breath. In the same way that Western media has used the ‘ceasefire’ agreement as a license to stop reporting on Israel’s ongoing bombardment and killing of Gazans, so too will it ignore efforts being made to algorithmically neuter Palestinian social media content, and the development of alternative social media platforms.

So it was that one of the most significant global tech stories of 2026 – the meteoric rise of the Sydney-based social media app, UpScrolled – was almost totally ignored by Australia’s mainstream media.

UpScrolled was founded in 2024 by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian software developer living in Sydney. In July that year, dismayed at the role big tech was playing in suppressing Palestinian content on social media (through techniques like shadow banning), Hijazi stepped away from a successful career in IT to build an alternative social media app, one that was free from shadow bans and algorithmic censorship. A year later, in late June 2025, he launched UpScrolled.

I downloaded UpScrolled shortly after it launched. The app’s user interface closely resembles that of Instagram and X, with stories and posts appearing as they do on Instagram, and text-based posts resembling those seen on X. What makes UpScrolled unique is the absence of feed manipulation (posts appear on a user’s feed chronologically), the lack of shadowbanning, and the absence of what UpScrolled has called “unfair takedowns” (i.e. removing posts without warrant).

Following its launch last year, UpScrolled grew slowly. On December 22, the company reported 40,000 downloads in its first 40 days of operation, and a total user base of only 90,000. By January of this year, it had reached 150,000 users. Those numbers, thanks to events in the US, would soon skyrocket.

On January 22, UpScrolled’s fortunes changed dramatically with the announcement of the TikTok USDS [US data security] Joint Venture, which saw a consortium of mostly US companies take control of TikTok’s US operations (an Emirati company holds 15 per cent, and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance holds a 20 per cent stake in the venture). Among the new US owners is Oracle, the tech firm owned by US billionaire Larry Ellison. Ellison is the largest private donor to the Israel Defence Forces. Another is Michael Dell, the billionaire founder and chairman of Dell Technologies, and donor to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (reportedly $US 1.8 million). Both Oracle and Dell are listed on the official BDS boycott list.

Following the joint venture announcement, amid fears of a new regime of censorship, and claims the platform was now censoring criticism of ICE by figures as well-known as musician Billie Eilish, TikTok users began abandoning the app en masse. Those fears were warranted, with Emmy-winning Gazan journalist Bisan Owda, who has 1.4 million followers on the platform, having her TikTok account suspended (it was later reactivated), and others reporting that they were unable to post anti-Trump videos or send messages with the word ‘Epstein’ included.

Where were those former TikTok users turning as an alternative? To a little-known Australian social media app called UpScrolled.

The figures are dizzying.  A week after the joint venture announcement, UpScrolled became the most downloaded app on Apple’s US, UK and Australian app stores. On January 29, Hijazi announced that the app had reached 1 million users. On 2 February, UpScrolled announced that it had hit 2.5 million users. At the time of writing, the app is now the fourth most popular app on Google’s Play Store, behind only ChatGPT, HBO, and Temo, and the eighth most popular free app on Apple’s App Store. That’s impressive company for a seven-month-old Australian start-up. You might even call it newsworthy.

As for the news coverage, UpScrolled’s rise has received significant independent and tech media attention, and it is likely that its user base will grow significantly over the coming days and weeks. On February 2, Hijazi was the star guest at Web Summit Qatar 2026, which according to Gulf media had sold out due to the excitement about his presence at the event.

But what about Australia’s media? Surely an Australian app, with an Australian founder, becoming the most downloaded app on Apple’s US app store, is a story worth telling? If it’s newsworthy for Euronews, surely it’s newsworthy for Australian news sites?

It seems not.

At the time of writing, a search for UpScrolled returned no results on the websites of The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, the Australian Financial Review, the Guardian, SBS, Seven News, and Nine News. News.com.au and the Herald Sun carried a single video clip about UpScrolled syndicated from Al Jazeera.  As for the ABC, Radio National’s tech and media program, Download This Show, ran a segment on UpScrolled’s rise on January 30. Other than that, the national broadcaster has published no written stories about the app.