UpScrolled founder denounces “Zionist money” at Web Summit, claims Big Tech enabled genocide in Gaza
Issam Hijazi, the creator of the fast-growing TikTok alternative, invoked a classic antisemitic trope about media control from the Doha mainstage.
The creator of a rapidly growing social media platform used the Web Summit conference in Qatar on Sunday to accuse Silicon Valley of manipulating global opinion on the Gaza war and to declare that his company would not depend on what he called “Zionist money.”
Issam Hijazi, founder of UpScrolled, a six-month-old network that promotes itself as an uncensored alternative to mainstream platforms, delivered a combative address portraying Big Tech as politically captured and morally indifferent. Without naming Jews as a group, he repeatedly described social media as controlled by interests aligned with Israel and suggested that these forces shape what the world is allowed to see.
“They try to control the media,” Hijazi said on stage. “They’ve been controlling the TV news outlets for the past, I don’t know, 60 years or so. And now they understand that social media is the new way to get information out, so they want to control the narrative again.”
He cited the recent involvement of American billionaire Larry Ellison in TikTok’s U.S. operations, noting that Ellison is “one of the biggest donors for the Friends of the IDF.” That, Hijazi said, “tells you a lot... You don’t have to really explain what’s happening here behind the scenes.”
The remarks drew applause from parts of the audience but immediately raised concerns among observers that they echoed long-standing antisemitic tropes about Jewish control of media and finance. Hijazi did not address those sensitivities directly, but went further when discussing how he plans to fund his company.
“We don’t really have to rely on Zionist money, I’ll put it out there, or rely on Silicon Valley money in order to become big,” he said, arguing that “ethical people around the world” were backing UpScrolled.
Hijazi framed his platform as a corrective to what he described as systematic suppression of pro-Palestinian content over the past two years.
“They’ve been suppressing, they’ve been censoring anything that is pro-Palestinian,” he said. “I was posting about events happening in Gaza and asking my friends across Europe and the U.S.: do you see what I’m posting? And they say, what content?”
He rejected the idea that such outcomes were merely technical failures. “We cannot keep blaming the algorithm,” he said. “Behind the scene there are certain people who train this algorithm to flag things that don’t really go well with their propaganda.”
Hijazi accused major platforms of having “enabled genocide on people” by providing technology used in Gaza, though he offered no specific evidence beyond his broader claim that controlling information shapes military outcomes.
“I think Big Tech throughout the last couple of years have proven that they are not really in it for being ethical in general. They have enabled genocide on people. The technology that they provided for certain regimes have enabled the killing of people, in Gaza, for example,” he said.
UpScrolled, he said, is designed to avoid those dynamics. The app has no algorithmic amplification, does not insert recommended posts, and aims to let users “log off” rather than keep them addicted.
“Other platforms are designed to have us as the product,” he said. “We don’t do that.”
According to Hijazi, the approach has resonated. The platform, he said, just passed 2.5 million users, up from 150,000 in early January, a 1,567% increase in a matter of weeks. The company has spent “zero on branding or marketing,” he added.
Asked whether UpScrolled was becoming a pro-Palestinian enclave, he replied: “Absolutely not. We’re pro-humanity.” Yet much of his speech centered on Gaza and on what he portrayed as a media ecosystem aligned with Israel.
A Palestinian born in Jordan and now an Australian citizen, Hijazi said he had lost relatives in Gaza and felt “complicit” while working for companies such as Oracle and IBM.
“I stopped being the same man,” he said. “I rolled up my sleeves, stepped away from Big Tech, and dedicated myself to build UpScrolled.”
The session unfolded against the backdrop of Web Summit’s own fraught history. In 2023, its founder Paddy Cosgrave resigned, before later returning, after comments accusing Israel of war crimes triggered boycotts by Google, Meta, Amazon and others.
