Who Is the Owner of UpScrolled App? Meet Issam Hijazi

People are fleeing from TikTok after the U.S. entity was taken over by American investors recently, and they are heading to a new app called UpScrolled. The app's creator is Issam Hijazi, and folks want to know more about him.

Issam is the CEO and owner of UpScrolled, which is based in Sydney, Australia. The tech businessman also heads Recursive Methods Pty Ltd, which is the company behind the Upscrolled app.

According to Forbes, the CEO previously worked for IBM, as well as Oracle, which was created by Larry Ellison, one of TikTok's new investors. People began leaving the platform over allegations that TikTok was hiding anti-Trump and anti-ICE content, something the platform claimed on X was due to an outage at one of Oracle's data centers.

Issam is of Palestinian and Jordanian descent and lives in Australia. According to his Instagram page, he is also a licensed pilot and father. He created the UpScrolled app after he noticed misinformation being spread on social media in late 2023. The platform launched in June of 2025 and does not censor content unless it violates community guidelines or contains hate speech, harassment, or bullying.

The app also does not discriminate based on politics or commercial agendas, and no algorithm suppresses users' content.

"Shadowbanned elsewhere? Not here," said an advertisement for the platform. "UpScrolled is the social platform where every voice gets equal power. No shadowbans. No algorithmic games. No pay-to-play favoritism. Just authentic connection where your content reaches the people who matter most."

UpScrolled is a natural alternative to TikTok, and social media users flocked to the social media app so quickly that they crashed the app's servers. On Jan. 26, 2026, UpScrolled shared a message on X noting that because people joined the platform so quickly, they "tapped out" its servers.

"Well, this is new," read the post. "You showed up so fast our servers tapped out. Frustrating? Yes. Emotional? Also yes. We're a tiny team building what Big Tech stopped being. Right now, we're scaling on caffeine to keep up with what YOU started. Bear with us. We're on it."

UpScrolled made it to the No. 2 spot on Apple's U.S. free apps chart on Jan. 27, and TikTok's partnering with investors such as Oracle is being blamed, in addition to the server issues.

Larry Ellison's support of right-wing politics prompted many people to leave TikTok in support of UpScrolled. Issam said that 60 members of his family have been murdered as genocide continues in Gaza, and UpScrolled shares pro-Palestinian content without censorship. Issam said that the genocide in Palestine prompted him to create UpScrolled.

"I worked for big tech companies. And then the genocide began," he told Rest of World. "I couldn’t take it anymore. I lost family members in Gaza, and I didn’t want to be complicit. So I was like, I’m done with this, I want to feel useful."

He added that he found a gap in the market for alternatives to big tech companies.

"I found this gap in the market, with a lot of people asking why there is no alternative to the Big Tech platforms for their content, which was getting censored," he continued. "So I thought, why don’t we build our own? I just rolled up my sleeves, and built it."