This Social Media CEO is Sick of the Algorithm

CARLA SERTIN: You want to make social media social again. Where do you think we lost the plot with social media platforms? When did that change start to happen?

ISSAM HIJAZI: I think that stopped when social media stopped being social, really. Social media started to become a tool for propaganda, for controlling people’s narratives, for controlling how you perceive things, your opinion about different topics. When those social media platforms start[ed] to impose mechanisms like censorship or shadowbanning to silence you or limit your reach to your audience.

Shadowbanning is interesting in particular; we hear a lot about that, specifically in relation to Palestine. Social media outlets claim that shadowbanning doesn’t exist.

Oh, it 100% exists, and now [that] we run a social media platform, we know that this is something that social media platforms, generally speaking, are able to control. Shadowbanning, just to explain what that means, is – let’s say you have thousands of followers and you post something, and only a couple of those followers see your content – that’s shadowbanning. It’s a mechanism that social media platforms effectively activate in certain situations, whether that’s to respond to certain surge in content about a certain topic or to do selective censorship about [a] certain narrative that’s happening.

For example, when wars break, when something like the genocide in Gaza happened, those mechanisms have been used by social media platforms. It’s something documented, and there has been much research by independent media outlets, where they have done the real posting of certain content and experiencing the content not reaching their audience – it’s something that has been well known that these platforms do, and [has been] experienced by different users.

In your view, is that a function of algorithms and how AI-driven algorithms works?

Oh, absolutely. So, what an algorithm does, it’s basically machine learning models – that’s a technical term. These machine learning models use data that they are trained on. Then, as a controller of that algorithm, you are able to fine-tune that algorithm towards what you think is right. That algorithm will start sniffing, listening to what users are doing and based on that, it will start doing certain actions.

Social media platforms use those algorithms in order to control the reach of content, to control your feed entirely, to push things into your feed or to manipulate your feed with things that may not be relevant to you, just to keep you hooked on the app – what’s called doomscrolling – so you find yourself spending hours on the app, just going from one video to another, from one content to another, without really getting real value. Those algorithms are specially designed for that purpose, to keep you addicted. They call it addiction loops.

Upscrolled doesn’t have an algorithm; it’s purely chronological. Is that correct?

Absolutely. Upscrolled is [what] social media [was] 20 years ago, when these platforms started. Twenty years ago, everything was chronological. You would see only the content of people or organisations that you followed. Other social media platforms started to introduce those algorithms to manipulate your feed.

At Upscrolled, we just give you 100% chronological feed as the default view when you open or land into the platform. We do certain ranking for you to discover other content, but that’s not the default view that you see when you open the app. This is if you’re interested to see what’s happening around the world, what’s trending in the world – you’re able to see in the app, and this is very fair and easy to explain. We don’t use sophisticated AI or machine learning algorithms in order to make those suggestions. It’s pretty much based on the engagement on the content; if certain content is getting a lot of likes or a lot of comments or reposts, then that will rank on the top of that discover feed for a few hours, then something else will replace it and so on. It’s very transparent and equal for everyone.

So is there no plan to integrate deeper tech into how content appears on your feed?

We deliberately want to continue providing the chronological feed, because we believe this is the right use of the technology. We want to provide control mechanisms for our end users, where they are in control of what they see, rather than us suggesting to them what they want to see.

And this is important for us in every decision that we [take] at Upscrolled. We follow something internally called [the] North Star. What that means is we want to create a product that provides value to our end users rather than prioritising profits, designing addiction loops or [creating something] just for the sake of it for the users to stay on. That makes our life challenging, yes, but it’s for the right cause, the right reason. That means we need to think differently now on how we introduce other features but without manipulating what you see on your feed.

There’s a mission, but in terms of monetising, I’m sure there’s a plan – maybe advertising down the line?

When it comes to monetising, there’s a lot of ways you can monetise on social media platforms. One way is to create, as an example, subscriptions where you are able, as a user, to verify your account. You get the blue check mark, you get certain perks with it, like additional allowance to post, extended length for the videos and so on. We started to roll out these features, and there will be other ways, or other subscription types. In addition, we’re thinking of introducing something where content creators can have a price on their content, and that will be exclusive to people who subscribe to it. Rather than just posting and everything being free for everyone, there will be exclusive content that, if someone subscribed to it, we’ll be able to see it at some point.

We will introduce advertisement to the platform, but we will do it the right way. We want to be selective in terms who can advertise on the platform, and the way that we show those ads to our end users.

I know that moderation, censorship and giving people a space where they are free of those constraints is part of the mission. How do you moderate your own content and make sure that you’re enforcing guidelines and making sure that content is still safe and appropriate?

Let’s start with the fact that free speech does not really equate to free reach for abuse. Within Upscrolled, we have community guidelines, which are public. Everyone is able to see that, and that comes with responsibility from our side to ensure that we create a safe space for everyone to interact.

If you want to define [what] censorship really is, it is when someone or some group has the power of deciding what you’re allowed to think and see; we’re not doing that. We’re allowing everyone to think freely, to express themselves freely and not impos[ing] any censorship. We do still moderate for anything that’s illegal, because there’s a lot of bad actors out there that want to do bad things – whether that’s selling illegal goods or drugs, or putting [out] pornography or illegal content. Such things would go into moderation, and we have humans to make the final decision when it comes to taking out or removing content that violates our terms and conditions, which in most cases violates laws in different countries.

So your community guidelines are based on legal frameworks, not so much on perspective or your own views?

Absolutely not. Upscrolled is a platform for everyone, and we want to ensure that continues to be the case. We’re not favouring anybody. Regardless of where they are, everyone is welcome to express themselves as long as they’re not harming or harassing other people, or [putting out] illegal content on the platform.

When you say humans make the final decision, does that mean technology is flagging posts and then humans are getting involved?

Absolutely. Currently, we have a team of content moderators around the world who go through the reported items from different users, but also sweep the platform and look for anything that requires removal. We’re integrating with technology to help us find and flag certain content that needs moderation.

The algorithm wouldn’t take a decision on its own; it will just flag it to the moderation team that will review it and then make decisions.

How big is the team?

When we had the surge, we had one person doing the moderation. Up until January this year, we were sitting around 150,000 users, but at the end of [the month], we surged in numbers – within one week we had an influx of 2.5 million users globally, and this is where we needed to actually scale the moderation team. Currently it is very elastic – it depends on the demand. If there is an event happening in the world, that team will become bigger, and so on, so it really depends on the amount of content that is being generated and events happening around the world.

It seems like some of your mission resonated with people. Has that evolved at all?

I believe frustration is big now amongst users of social media platforms across the world. They’re frustrated because of the mechanics these platforms operate in, and the leadership of those platforms, regardless of [who] they are. The recent acquisition of TikTok obviously was a clear flag that users were done, [they] were fed up with those platforms, and they wanted to find a refuge somewhere else; some of them already knew about Upscrolled. Some of them started to talk about it and that became viral, and people found refuge in Upscrolled, a place not really represented by the same people as the Silicon Valley people, or the billionaires, that gives them the right to be themselves without being selectively censored. And I guess that was the reason for the surge that we have seen.

What’s the plan to continue growing? Is there any early feedback that suggests you might move the platform in one way or the other?

I believe creating great products is the most important thing in any field – in any industry, really. And this is no different when it comes to social media platforms. So we’re focused on creating a great user experience for our users to provide the functionality and tools that enables them to express themselves in different ways.

What specifically are people asking for?

Good question. People have been using social media platforms for the past 20 years, and those platforms have evolved quite a lot in terms of functionality and tools that they are able to provide. Upscrolled is very new. We’re less than a year old since the launch. Compared to these other big tech companies, we’re relatively small in terms of funding, team [size] and what we are able to achieve in a relatively short period of time. Those users are expecting things that they are seeing in other platforms. One example of that is users are asking for functionality similar to Instagram reels. In a way we’re against that because that creates something related to the addiction loops that I mentioned, so it will take some time for users to unlearn and get away from that addiction.

It’s similar to drug addiction – you need some time to withdraw from those symptoms. I guess it’s a process. We’re trying to get our users to unlearn what is normal, or what felt normal, for them, and start to come into what social [media] should be like. We’re trying to introduce different features that are competing with what that they are used to.

That also means we need to start thinking in a more innovative way to create some interesting products that people will eventually fall in love with. Currently, we’re focusing on creating similar experiences to what they are used to, but at some point we are going to introduce differentiating features that do not exist on those other platforms. What they are, I don’t know. That will come with time, hopefully soon.

What’s the goal when you’re looking at these features?

I want them to address the way people want to express themselves, the way that they can know one another and connect with one another. Some people like to express themselves in videos, others in photos, others in text and so on. We want to create a set of tools that allow you, as a content creator, to curate the content the way that you prefer, and then have the users who would be listening, watching, reading the content, to consume that content in the way that they can control – and in a way that they like. We’ll be continually investing in such tools in order to allow those people to express themselves in the way that they prefer.

I know that Upscrolled was briefly off the Play Store, and there was a similar situation in Saudi Arabia – can you tell me more about those obstacles?

After the surge, I believe in a few weeks we had our app taken out from the Google Play Store. We were not notified about the reason of the delisting of the app, so we were in touch with Google Play to understand what happened. We did not get much of a response, but I think the community has done their part on the internet, and they started to talk about it on different social media platforms. In less than 24 hours our app was again available for users to download on the Google Play Store.

I think we were always going to struggle when it came to creating a space where people were able to express themselves freely. When we are seen as a platform that is trying to destabilise other platforms, that will add pressure from from different organisations around the world, and I guess that was the reason for Google Play [Store] to take that decision – probably some pressures from certain organisations. But yes, I think this is a struggle – or a challenge, let’s put it that way – that we will continue to experience as we grow something.

Do you think people are ready for “social” social media? Are they ready to go back to the early internet age?

I believe people are ready, and I’ve seen many examples around the around the world that tell me people are ready. I think the past two three years have changed the way people think, the way people make choices in life.

An example of that is a little bit political. Look at New York, [at] Mamdani – who would have thought that one of the biggest cities in the world with not the biggest Muslim majority would have a Muslim mayor being elected and running the city? I think there is [an] awakening, globally. People have started to become conscious about their decisions, about the products that they use, and they want to have ethical alternatives.

The same thing, I strongly believe, applies to social media platforms. People understand that they’ve been cheated, their data has been sold, their feeds have been manipulated, they have been censored and shadowbanned, they’ve been oppressed – they have seen the truth.

And I think that is going to be the real motivator for people starting to make the right choices, moving into platforms like Upscrolled – that’s in social media – and in everything else in life, by choosing a more ethical, more ethical products.

Some of the criticism that Upscrolled has received is about its moderation – critics have said there’s a wealth of anti-Semitic content on the platform. How do you respond to those critics and what’s the plan to grow your moderation?

The growth that we had wasn’t something anticipated. I think it could be one of the fastest that any social media has seen globally – within a short period of time to organically reach millions and millions of users. We were not really prepared for that. We did not have these sophisticated systems at that point to be able to handle the amount of bad actors that wanted to bring the platform down. In general, that changed everything. We worked really hard the past few months to tighten our infrastructure, to tighten our moderation strategy. There’s no place for hate speech on Upscrolled whatsoever. Our community guidelines have been clear from day one. We’ve been enforcing those, albeit [it] was a bit slow in the beginning because of the surge. Now we’re much more stabilised. We are very small, and we need to ramp up everything to keep up with the surge that we had. We don’t allow hate speech on Upscrolled, and that’s never is going to be the case.

How is your growth tracking?

It’s very early stage for us, [although] we have millions and millions of users today. There’s a lot that we are doing behind the scenes to continue increasing the engagement rates, but let me re-emphasise that we’re not here to create addiction loops. Our goal is not to create the highest engagement time for users to spend many hours on the app.

I know this sounds crazy – especially for investors – when you create a social media platform, but it’s really about us focusing on creating an ethical product that provides real value to end users without compromising on anything else.

We’ll be working towards that in specific ways by partnering with the right content creators – with the right partners in media in general – to continue to create content that is actually valuable and of interest to our end users.

Carla Sertin is the head of editorial content at WIRED Middle East, leading content strategy and execution for the region. Prior to joining WIRED Middle East, Sertin was a group editor at ITP Media Group, overseeing 15 B2B magazines and growing their reach across the region. A Lebanese journalist, she ... Read More

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About UpScrolled

UpScrolled puts people back in control of their social media experience. Founded by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist, it was built on a simple principle: social media should serve people, not exploit them. No shadowbanning. No data sales. Share freely, connect safely, trust your feed. Fairness and freedom in a digital landscape that has lost its way.

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