TikTok Loses Ground to UpScrolled After Censorship Claims
A relatively new social media app called UpScrolled has experienced a rapid rise in downloads and visibility on Apple’s App Store, climbing into the top ranks in the free apps and social networking categories as of late January 2026. The platform, which supports short-form videos, video editing, text posts, and other content-sharing features, briefly overwhelmed its servers due to the influx of new users.
UpScrolled positioned itself as a “censorship-free” alternative to established platforms, emphasizing no shadowbans, no algorithmic throttling, and equal visibility for all posts that comply with community guidelines against hate speech, harassment, or illegal content. Its “following” feed displays posts chronologically without manipulation, while the “discover” feed prioritizes engagement metrics like likes, comments, and reshares with a light time-decay factor and added randomness to promote fresh content.
The surge appears linked to user dissatisfaction with TikTok following its recent U.S. operations restructuring. Last week, TikTok spun off its American business into a new majority U.S.-owned entity involving Oracle (co-founded by Trump ally Larry Ellison), Silver Lake, and MGX, with ByteDance retaining a minority stake. This change, aimed at complying with federal requirements to separate from Chinese ownership, has sparked accusations that the platform is suppressing content critical of Trump, his administration, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policies.
App analytics indicate a sharp download increase, with reports of 41,000 installs in a recent multi-day period representing a significant portion of its lifetime totals and a multi-thousand-percent jump in daily averages. Rankings placed it as high as No. 9-12 overall in free apps and No. 2 in social networking on iOS, often ahead of TikTok in those charts. While it’s not clear if UpScrolled will retain this burst in popularity long-term, the app’s sudden spike in users could jump-start it into wider use.
