Issam Hijazi, creator of the new social media platform UpScrolled, presented his app as a way to escape “control [of] the narrative” by pro-Israel figures and said that he doesn’t need to rely on “Zionist money,” in his remarks at Web Summit Qatar in Doha on Sunday night.

UpScrolled topped the charts in Apple’s app store in recent days, after an American investor group finalized a deal to buy part of TikTok from its Chinese owners.

Hijazi, a Jordan-born Australian citizen who identifies as Palestinian, said in an onstage interview that “we cannot keep blaming the algorithm or tech” for censorious social media, “because there are people who are gilding this tech … who train this algorithm to flag things that don’t really go well with their propaganda or agendas.”

“It became very obvious from the latest acquisition of TikTok by Larry Ellison and [Michael] Dell, and [Ellison] is one of the biggest donators [sic] for the Friends of the IDF. I mean, that tells you a lot,” Hijazi said.

The UpScrolled founder then evoked a classic antisemitic trope to describe the Jewish tech entrepreneurs: “They’ve been controlling the media, as in the TV news outlets, for the past, I don’t know, six years, and now they understand social media is the new way to get information out, so they want to control the narrative again. … They don’t want the free flow of data across the globe.”

The moderator, The Economist’s Gregg Carlstrom, challenged Hijazi’s claims, asking if he had evidence of the broad censorship of anti-Israel views. Hijazi responded by asking the audience for a show of hands if they had ever had such posts taken down; many in the Qatari audience raised their hands.

“I’m speaking from experience about what’s happening to us in Gaza,” said Hijazi, who has claimed to have had 60 relatives killed in the war that began when Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Hijazi later spoke about how his app does not downgrade or amplify posts based on their content, and is not made to be maximally addictive like other social media algorithms.

When Carlstrom asked Hijazi if he had trouble raising money for his product as a result, he responded: “There’s always ugly and there’s always good. We are fortunate to have a lot of good people reaching out to us and wanting to be part of our mission. … We don’t have to rely on Zionist money — I’ll put it out there — or on Silicon Valley money in order to become big.” 

Asked if he is positioning UpScrolled as a pro-Palestinian network, Hijazi said: “We’re pro-humanity.” 

Since UpScrolled launched last year, users have expressly moved to the app in order to post antisemitic and anti-Israel content. One anti-Israel influencer posted on TikTok that the app “has fallen officially under the control of Zionist billionaire and MAGA oligarch Larry Ellison … I need you to switch apps. At least download this app called UpScrolled.” 

While Hijazi claimed that UpScrolled does not boost content, a Jewish Telegraph Agency reporter found posts on the app’s “discover” page, recommending new accounts, with messages such as “all kikes face the wall #fuckthejews” and “I stand with Khamenei, Hezbollah, Houthis & Hamas.” 

Web Summit has held an annual conference in Qatar, a key Hamas sponsor, in recent years. The events are organized in cooperation with the Qatari government. Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave has come under fire since the Oct. 7 attacks for accusing Israel of war crimes, and Israeli companies, followed by Google, Intel, Meta and others, withdrew from past Web Summits in Europe. 

Cosgrave wrote enthusiastically about UpScrolled on LinkedIn last week, calling it “the first breakout app of 2026,” and a social media platform that lacks “some of the infuriating censorship and shadow banning you find on other apps.” He called Hijazi the “star attraction” at Web Summit Qatar, in a post on X, one of several about UpScrolled in the past week.
Hijazi had been listed as a speaker at the upcoming Al Jazeera Forum, which begins this weekend, but no longer appears on the public list of speakers.