19 October 2026
Can You Build a Profitable Social Media Platform Without Exploiting People?
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Issam Hijazi didn’t start UpScrolled because the world needed another social media app.
He started it because he believed the existing model was failing the people using it.
Speaking on Occupied Tech, Hijazi described the principle behind UpScrolled in one sentence:
“We’re building a product for users rather than having the users being the product.”
That idea runs through almost every part of the platform.
Instead of automatically shaping a person’s feed based on what an algorithm thinks will keep them watching, Hijazi wants people to actively choose what they see. Instead of treating privacy as an optional extra, he describes it as something that should influence product decisions from the beginning. And instead of assuming every feature that increases engagement is worth building, UpScrolled asks whether that engagement comes at the expense of the person using it.
The conversation covers everything from end-to-end encryption and user-created feeds to ethical advertising, investor selection and the challenge of competing with platforms that have spent years optimising for attention.
Hijazi also talks about the role the community plays in product development.
“We’re not building on our own because we think it’s a great thing,” he said. “We listen to what people are telling us.”
That includes feedback from civil society organisations about privacy and security, which Hijazi says has helped shape work including end-to-end encrypted messaging.
He is equally candid about the trade-offs involved.
Building an alternative doesn’t mean immediately escaping every piece of Big Tech infrastructure. UpScrolled still relies on services it may not philosophically align with, because at its current scale, those services can be necessary to operate reliably.
The goal, Hijazi argues, is not purity overnight. It is to build something viable enough to eventually create more choice.
That philosophy also shapes how he thinks about people moving away from existing platforms. Rather than expecting users to abandon everything all at once, he frames change as gradual: start using the alternative, help it grow, and move more of your digital life over as the alternative becomes capable of supporting it.
For Hijazi, that is how a new ecosystem gets built. Not by waiting for a perfect alternative to appear, but by giving one the chance to become better.
Issan Hijazi joined Paul Biggar on Occupied Tech, a Tech for Palestine podcast, to discuss ethical technology, user control, privacy and what it takes to build an alternative to Big Tech.
Watch the full interview here
Download UpScrolled:
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.
Media contact
Leila Dastyar | PR Director | leila@dna.online
