Issam Hijazi wasn’t supposed to start a social media empire. He had a comfortable career in tech, working for major companies like Oracle and IBM. But after watching the genocide in Gaza unfold on his screen in real time, something shifted. As a Palestinian with family members killed in the conflict, Hijazi felt complicit just working for companies he believed were enabling surveillance and oppression. So he did what most of us only fantasize about: he quit and built something better.

Enter UpScrolled, a social network that challenges everything we’ve come to expect from Big Tech platforms. Instead of algorithmic feeds designed to addict you, UpScrolled offers a straightforward chronological timeline, basically what social media looked like 20 years ago, before companies figured out how to weaponize your attention. The platform also promises not to sell your data to advertisers, and explicitly won’t shadow-ban or censor content unless it violates community guidelines. For a founder, Hijazi took an unusually bold stance by refusing to recognize Israel as a location option on the platform, a deeply personal decision rooted in his family’s displacement.

When Hijazi launched UpScrolled in July 2025, he was literally a one-man operation. By January 2026, when the TikTok deal with the Trump administration was finalized, something wild happened. People desperate for an alternative to Big Tech started flooding the platform. Within weeks, UpScrolled went from 150,000 users to 2.5 million. Today, it’s crossed 5 million users, and Hijazi has scrambled to hire a team of about 25 people to keep things running.

Of course, rapid growth comes with serious growing pains. The Anti-Defamation League called out UpScrolled for failing to adequately moderate antisemitic and extremist content. Hijazi acknowledges the problem exists across all social platforms, even 20-year-old companies struggle with hate speech, but insists UpScrolled is strengthening its moderation game. The platform uses human moderators combined with AI tools that detect (but don’t make final decisions about) problematic content. Every removal decision gets reviewed by a person, and users can appeal.

Looking ahead, Hijazi isn’t just thinking about building the next TikTok replacement. He wants UpScrolled to become the mainstream alternative to Big Tech while also building independent digital infrastructure that other communities can use. He’s being selective about funding partners, only accepting investors aligned with UpScrolled’s values.

For monetization, he’s exploring options like verified badges, a marketplace for small businesses, and creator subscriptions, but he’s drawing the line on which companies can advertise. Ethical businesses welcome; corporations complicit in exploitation? Not happening.

The real test will be whether UpScrolled can actually stay true to its ideals while scaling to compete with platforms that have billions in resources. But for now, millions of people are giving it a shot, and that’s something.