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.
(cw: Nazi shit) https://bsky.app/profile/ianthe.online/post/3mdg7iwc6ik2y
They’re already banning trans women just for being trans
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?
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”
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, the Nazis are the ones doing the censoring on TikTok in the first place
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”?
@alyaza @jaennaet It was having problems with this within a week of launch (source: I downloaded it within a week of launch and saw/reported more than one Holocaust denialism post/commenter in that time before I closed the app). So they may be being overloaded again, but from what I heard they hadn’t even implemented basic username filtering before this next wave. I didn’t say anything at the time bc it was new and I wanted to believe they meant well, but it’s been 6 months…
A year ago this comment would have gotten deleted from nearly any subreddit. Today it’s recognized as fact.
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’m similarly suspicious, but it’s not just code for “nazi-friendly” but also crackpots, maladaptives, etc. Rational people who read and say “anti-censorship” in this context know it means that it’s not beholden to corporate or government interests. But everyone else seems to want to interpret that as “I can say whatever I want! How dare you mod anything I say?! Freeze-peach, y’all!”
I wish they’d pick a different term for these non-corporate alternatives, but I don’t have a better suggestion to offer right now.
Agreed. Some censorship is good. Just like some regulation is good in any industry. Otherwise, the worst of the worst will destroy it with propaganda and hate. Censorship of things that are meant solely to hurt others or to spread misinformation are needed.
Exactly. It’s been proven time and time again that if you have absolutely zero moderation except for blatantly illegal content, you’ll eventually be running a Nazi bar.
Although in UpScrolled’s case, I’m not sure if they weren’t explicitly out to build a Nazi bar since they do seem to have a huge Nazi and antisemitism problem (well, problem for anyone who’s not a Nazi anyhow) and they’ve apparently mass-banned trans people. So this profusion of Nazis might be a “it’s a feature and not a bug” scenario, even though their TOS seemingly disallows hate speech.
Also, for an “anti-censorship” platform it’s funny that they ban any kind of “adult” content.
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
Loops finally seems usable now. I tried the beta a while back and it was kinda “Meh” but it’s improved significantly since. And you can browse on the website now, too. I’m not into short form videos, but credit where it’s due.
Well, I do like short form videos, but I hate panning for the gems and just let my friends send me the ones that rise to top.
Looks like Skylight is app-only, no website.
That’s almost irrelevant though, since very nearly no one is using tiktok (or any other short form video site except maybe Shorts because of how it shows up while browsing regular youtube) via its website. This is Lemmy so I’m sure some nerd here has some weird reason to want to do so, but they’re an astronomically tiny minority of users.
Does “no censorship” mean “no moderation”?
Why would I want to join a dark pattern social media?
It claims to be a platform with “no censorship”
So they don’t censor CSAM?
they’re actually more overzealous in terms of policy about nudity and sexualized material than basically any alternative
Ok so they’re just lying then.
4 trackers ,no thanks
I wonder if Upscroll is one of the 13 known forms of engagement…
