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TikTok, which played a major role in exposing Israel’s war crimes in Gaza in the early days of the genocidal onslaught, now has Donald Trump ally Larry Ellison as a major shareholder and is set to become another weapon for the Zionist state. But a pro-Palestine platform is fighting back.
By HASSEN LORGAT
The genocide in Gaza was not only a war on an occupied people that has resulted in deaths said to be much higher than stated, according to The Lancet and more recently the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese.
Albanese warned that the true death toll from the Israeli offensive in Gaza could be as high as 680 000 killed, mostly women and children.
We have all seen the indescribable damage to institutions of learning, healing and worship. This was a war also against truth and justice, but importantly marked the unravelling of Israel as a warmonger, with its hasbara lies in shreds. But one thing we have learnt about fighting against anti-Palestinian hate and injustice generally in the world is that the oppressor, once defeated, does not simply lay down and accept it. They turn around and fight back whilst those pro-justice advocates go back to living their normal lives in an abnormal world.
Let us take the case of TikTok, which has been highly credited for spreading more factual views about Israel and what many regard as the most immoral army in the world, and its killings of largely Palestinian women and children that the world has widely recognised as a genocide.
So, what did they do about TikTok? They started a campaign against it, stating, among other things, that it was a security risk and that China could get access to user data or manipulate the algorithm for propaganda or division.
Trump always recognised the value of TikTok for his recent electoral success and, through threats, propaganda and law, wanted to make a ‘smash and grab’ of TikTok for its own purposes.
In September last year (2025), we found proof when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was secretly recorded boasting to his class of influencers at Israel’s Consulate General in New York that TikTok was ‘the most important purchase going on right now’. He also added that X (formerly Twitter) are key ‘weapons’ for Israel.
Watch this video where the lecturer on genocide perpetration tells his students why media ownership is important to get your message through. Watch the video here: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DPGvYbBlcqD/
A few days ago, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sold its majority share to a US consortium led by Donald Trump ally Larry Ellison, as well as Silver Lake and Emirati investment firm MGX. Collectively, the new partners hold a 50 per cent stake, while ByteDance retains a 19.9 per cent stake.
This has not gone unnoticed by pro-Palestine protestors. They fear that Palestinian voices will be censored as Netanyahu wished, and that they are now able to change the algorithm to ensure young people watch more pro-Israel content instead of pro-Palestinian content.
The biggest innovation for the social justice movement, at least for me as a media justice activist, brings me to Issam Hijazi.
Issam Hijazi is a technologist and the founder and CEO of UpScrolled, as well as the head of Recursive Methods Pty Ltd, an Australia-based company. Hijazi is Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian and has worked with big names like IBM and Oracle, and has lived in various countries including Jordan, the UAE, Singapore and Australia.
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He strongly criticised traditional social media platforms for putting profit over principle and for betraying the very ideals they claim to uphold.
He created UpScrolled in 2025 when he noticed that ‘meaningful stories disappeared from feeds while misinformation thrived’. It is reported elsewhere that he began working on it in late 2023, but it has risen to prominence as it aims to combat the censorship and shadow-banning of pro-Palestinian voices on mainstream platforms, which we will increasingly see on TikTok but are already well aware of on Facebook and other Meta platforms.
He strongly criticised traditional social media platforms for putting profit over principle and for betraying the very ideals they claim to uphold.
In an interview, we learn that Hijazi lost over 60 family members in Gaza and that this was his small response to his loss. On the app, Hijazi and his team state that they have built a platform that should ‘serve people — all people — equally. No hidden agendas. No quiet silencing. No favouritism. A place where freedom of expression is protected, not manipulated, and where social responsibility isn’t an afterthought but the foundation’.
UpScrolled, available on Android and iOS, is being noticed far and wide. Whether the people turn up for Hijazi and the Palestinians is not certain, but there is an upward trend that has even blown their servers recently. As a result of this, they wrote on Bluesky: ‘You showed up so fast our servers tapped out,’ and the engineers are sorting it out. Statistics reveal that they were averaging about 14,000 downloads per day.
So, I am optimistic that we will be up and ready to meet the challenge of truth-telling. I have joined the wider family out there: I scrolled and joined. To find out more, go here: https://upscrolled.com/en/about/
Hassen Lorgat is a social justice and media activist.
