New "No Censorship" App is "Beefing Up" Its Own Censorship
UpScrolled Censoring "Disinformation", "Bullying", & "Hate Speech"
UpScrolled board member Paul Biggar announced the rapidly growing “no censorship” app will censor “disinformation”, “bullying”, and “hate speech”.
Biggar went so far as to criticize X and Facebook for not censoring enough, as he proudly announced UpScrolled’s new “Trust & Safety” board of “experts” that will censor users for their own good. “We’re beefing that up”.
Odd, considering UpScrolled advertised itself as a “No censorship” platform.
“[W]e don’t allow certain things on the platform. We don’t allow you to spread disinformation, to bully, to harass or have hate speech,” Biggar said yesterday.
The problem is “hate speech”, “disinformation”, and “bullying” are the same excuses Big Tech uses to censor pro-Palestinian content that UpScrolled was created to support.
TikTok deletes content for “hate speech” if it merely “call[s] somebody a Zionist” in a negative tone. And just this week, TikTok was caught censoring the word “Epstein”, and deleting Bisan Owda’s 1.4 million follower account, apparently for the “crime” of continuing to document the destruction of Gaza.
After UpScrolled’s censorship plans prompted immediate backlash, UpScrolled founder Issam Hijazi tried to calm worries by publicly dismissing Biggar’s video as not an “official statement”.
But he didn’t deny anything Biggar said about UpScrolled’s own TikTok-ish policies.
I test drove UpScrolled myself and discovered it currently has users reporting posts for "Hate speech or symbols", "Bullying or harassment", "False information", "Offensive" content, and "Supporting political agendas unfairly".
Despite these easily abused policies, people want an app where they can criticize Israel without fear of being deleted or suppressed.
Today, virtually all major social media platforms brag about their censorship of “antisemitism”—the definition of which is ever-expanding to include anything pro-Israel groups want.
At the very least, UpScrolled seems it will offer users an escape from that.