Issam Hijazi, born in Jordan to Palestinian parents, lost 60 members of his family in the Gaza genocide. They weren’t from Gaza originally, but from elsewhere in Palestine. They fled there to escape Zionist violence before being “locked in” many years ago. A few managed to escape to Egypt. Zionists killed the rest.

Issam decided to fight back the best way he knew how. Issam started coding as a child, and has a tech career behind him that includes big names including IBM and even Oracle – whose owner Larry Ellison is a staunch Zionist and who recently acquired Tik Tok and has since installed Zionists in key positions controlling content decisions. 

Upset by censorship of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices he decided to build an alternative, based in Sydney, where he moved permanently five years ago. The idea was that Australian democracy would provide legal protections against political pressure, and allow UpScrolled to moderate fairly, without shadow-banning or the obvious pro-Israel tilt of major tech platforms. It’s been online since June of 2025, and is rapidly growing as popular voices are excluded from established platforms over Gaza. “They’re doing the heavy lifting”, he quips. 

See my research for this story, captured on the Stone Transparency system. :

But he’s not naive about the inherent challenges of managing online content. During our interview I asked him what he would do if the NSW government outlawed the phrase “Globalise the Intifada”. He refused to commit to a specific course of action in advance, but said that relocation was an “option”, listing Ireland as a potential location among others. 

He was tight-lipped about the specifics of funding, but confirmed what I had read online that there was no VC funding behind the project, “yet”, just “angel investors” and his own money.

He was clear that this didn’t mean it was a free-for-all of illegal content. In fact he said clearly that there were cases he would be tougher on hate speech than established platforms like X (formerly Twitter). 

A key difference, Issam promises that shadow-banning will never take place on his platform. You’re either censored – and you know it – or you’re not.

When we spoke a week ago – via zoom since he was in Jordan at the time, the platform had just hit one hundred thousand users. Since then growth for the app (which is smartphone only, with no web-accessibility as yet) has spiked dramatically, with the app hitting number 2 on the US Appstore. 

Wow! As a fellow newstech entrepreneur, I am awed by Issam’s capacity and a little jealous of Upscrolled’s explosive success. From Stone Transparency, to the Upscrolled team: Good luck and godspeed!

UPDATE: The day after this post was published UpScrolled hit 1 million downloads and is currently one of the fastest growing apps of all time.