Google Play has delisted UpScrolled, the “censorship-resistant” social media app founded by Issam Hijazi, following its rapid growth to over 2.5 million users and its brief stint as a top-ranked alternative to TikTok.
While the app remains available for existing users, Google has not provided a specific reason for the removal; UpScrolled’s team confirmed they are working with the Play Store for reinstatement while maintaining their commitment to unfiltered content.
This development follows the app’s rapid ascent in popularity, particularly amid concerns over content moderation on competing platforms like TikTok.
Has anyone here actually tried the app? The first (and thankfully last) time I tried it, it was full of nazis and actual CSAM. Maybe too censorship resistant for its own good??
Tbh until today I had zero idea if was Palestinian
I hope Europe makes their own App Store and sells cool flip phones like they have in Japan.
Sell it to us too.
Kindly, An American wanting to starve the corrupt beast of my government.
Google is a fucking monopoly. (Please do not use any Google product. If you care about freedom, there are tons of alternatives for most products.)
Start with:
switch to DuckDuckGo search or Brave Search
switch to Firefox on your phone and use uBlock Origin (not the weak lite version, but the full Origin version)
Good job you’ve done 80% of the work. You can continue to de-Google
btw
Don’t use brave it’s still chromium/ pays Google
I use Firefox bro 🦊
Waterfox ftw.
Honestly Firefox is fine for now until they add their AI shit
I switched to Vivaldi and Ecosia, barely notice a difference.
Ecosia is OK, but if you use Vivaldi (I’m guessing it’s Chromium) you will give power to Google. If we want to fight Google, there are three main areas.
1 - The most important is search (fortunately they suck and it’s easy to change).
2 - The second most important is Chromium (there is only one alternative, Firefox - I don’t count Safari because it’s for Apple devices). Firefox has Manifest V2; if we lose this, we lose great power.
3 - The third most important is YouTube. I think this is the hardest one because maintaining a video-sharing platform is very expensive, and it’s not something that can live just with donations.
Vivaldi also kept Manifest V2, so old extensions do keep working there. They also have a mastodon server, and email/calendar/feeds, so they offer more out of the box than Firefox. Lots of projects built on other open source projects like Chromium and KDE do offer legitimate alternatives.
YouTube has to be replaced with a decentralized torrent-like based system where every user shares the load with what they are watching.
this could be great for popular content
It would be a great solution for most media only because computers are so fast and have excellent connections nowadays. I think if everyone just hosts their own content through a system like this we can preserve even niche content.
Obviously there would be some serious technical hurdles such as search. It wouldn’t be a magic bullet, but a good compromise to the top-down Monopoly we have now.
This is very good idea but we’d need domains for that
For #3, how much would it actually cost to host a medium sized YouTube channel on peertube? I top off my prepaid hosting costs every few years to cover my website’s remarkably high traffic (just me and a few other people :P). Consequently I have no idea how much it would cost to self host a site with actual visitors and video content.
I guess too much because think like you have 1000 videos each video is ~500 mb (also you’ll need to store 144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p versions) let’s say 1 GB storage for each video, total storage need: 1TB just for one channel it’s ok but there would be like 10k channel at least
1 TB * 10000 = 20 TB * 500 = 500 hard disk with 20 TB
let’s say each one is $350 total $175,000 (and this is hard disk I thing you’re not going to use hard disks)
(and this is just storage I don’t know about traffic costs)
You are probably right that low quality clickbait, or ultra long-form content couldn’t survive under that model. Also, the recodes and regional hosting for sites with a global reach adds cost.
With that said, I wonder if the economics work out better for a group of people who share an interest and want to cultivate a community around it. All 10k channels don’t need to go on one server. For me, I think being decentralized is a key part of the benefit. I see the folks on urbanists.video doing the peertube thing very well. I talked to them a while back because I couldn’t find a way to pitch in for server costs and it sounded like they were self-funding while they figured out their open collective. We’re limited on what we can learn from them because the viewcounts aren’t in YouTube’s ballpark and the creators post both places and probably owe a lot of their exposure to the YouTube algorithm rather than Peertube. Nevertheless, the Urbanism folks have sown the seeds to get out from under YouTube’s thumb and Google themselves will water that seed by enshittifying their own product. I’m curious to see it continue to develop.
Does anyone around here run a Peertube?
The real cost of a centralized platform like YouTube also includes giving up the freedom of communities to set their own standards, and while it isn’t a monetary cost, I think it’s worth careful consideration.
It could be a good thing to have an internet with less slop and more high quality content produced by people and for people. How we decide that will likely be contentious. I’m sure there’s some very rich people out there who would be thrilled if poor people couldn’t afford to be heard outside their own communities.
Not everything is worth the disk space it’s saved on (and 3 backups of course). YouTube has become increasingly filled with such content. That AI generated listical video of the 10 best ways to painlessly pluck nose hairs probably won’t make the cut. If users have some skin in the game, if it feels like their space and their communities again, perhaps things will improve.
Some sort of torrent tube that let’s you seed what you star react could be a useful way of giving videos wider reach as they gain popularity within an organic community. Upvotes would mean something if every upvote stored a 1MB video fragment on your device for seeding.
Nice
the only thing I can’t replace yet is Maps. reviews, photos, in-trip driving instructions, it’s just so full-featured I can’t imagine myself without it
I haven’t used Google Maps for four months. OpenStreetMap has been enough for me. I don’t need reviews, photos, or driving instructions. Also, the constant use of navigation apps is atrophying our mental mapping skills.
OSM from F-Droid is the way, but there are a lot of apps now based on OSM data that are also very good like organic maps. It can be hard to switch over metadata, and you might lose some of the conveniences, but it’s manageable or even better for some uses like hiking.
My main problem now is that Google has a monopoly on the Android app store. Plus, most banking apps use play services, so good luck using your own phone ROM.
My bank has a mobile site that is more functional than their app. I guess that’s not the case for every bank.
do they expect from me to throw my phone away becuase it’s old? hardware is working great >5 years but they limit the software and of course I will pass that limit
it’s not that hard to do if a company don’t accept/respect your choice then you shouldn’t accept them
edit: typo
I use a custom ROM (idk if this is the right word). I don’t have Google Services or any Google apps. My previous banking app didn’t accept custom ROMs, so I just canceled that and switched to one that does accept them. Now my banking app works great and I have no problems on my phone.
They still haven’t removed twitter for the AI generated child porn.
deleted by creator
Ditch Google Play !
You can use Obtainium and F-Droid to install apps as directly from the Developer as possible.
You can use Aurora Store to get things from the App Store anonymously.
If you want, you can install /e/os (any phone) or GrapheneOS (Pixels only) to de-google your Android as much as possible !
F-Droid (main repo + izzy’s repo) is enough for 70-80% of app needs and their quality is very good (in play store there is millions app but most off them is scam and trash)
EU, what about Google monopolies??
Reminder that Google is on it’s third attempt to prevent or limit the installation of APKs outside of the Play Store, meaning they are near the point they can effectively control what apps people run.
Anyone who cares about freedom should install Graphene OS now.
This was the real reason for me to ditch the whole Google
I may compromise privacy
but I’d die for FREEDOM
When this happens I’m flashing graphene os onto my pixel 9
why wait
u should do that anyway, it’s so nice to not feel watched while typing
Do it now, use obtainium, droidfy and aurora. Nearly every app works except google wallet.
The updated F-Droid Basic is great, it’s modern and it
- UI rewritten from scratch with Kotlin compose
- improved search, also searching in descriptions and translations
- easier to discover new apps, also highlighting the most downloaded ones
- installation approval before downloading
- multiple updates/downloads at the same time
- notifying user of issues with apps (e.g. signing key changed)
- optional Material You color theme
- improved filtering of lists source
My only problem stopping me is I use my phone for work too. Microsoft auth, outlook. Mostly just auth. I was looking it up a bit ago and people said it breaks it for work accounts
Not a good idea to mix personal and work devices. I’d recommend getting a cheap budget phone to use for work.
Or ask your work to give you a phone?
My company insists on spyware for my phone, so I insist they give me a phone for work stuff. I leave it off in a drawer at home when I’m not on call.
Its not me but the person I responded to that is using one phone, so their work may not provide such things.
I’d recommend demanding work getting a cheap budget phone.
If they require you have work software they can provide the hardware to run it.
Your phone is your phone.
I use edge for mails and texts because msoft auth stopped prompting and working.
The MS auth I need for a work VPN has been set up to call my phone instead, letting me sign in by tapping the # button after answering the phone call from MS.
I currently use MS Auth on my Graphene OS phone. Have installed Play Services on that profile, though
And this is why, we sold have https://joinloops.org/ instead
That’s a different type of platform though. Upscrolled = insta, Loops = tiktok.
So, join Pixelfed?
I don’t see why not, if you want, why not both
Not just an alternative to TikTok, but also need one for Google Play, and Android too while we’re at it. (Yes, I know they exist. Just making a point)
brb buying an iPhone
‘no wait not like that’
Clickbait? The developer is Palestinian/Australian, the app’s audience is global, and it’s not just Palestine-specific. So what’s up with the sensationalised title?
If anything the app is Australian, Australian made, the developers are in Australia… this is clickbait
It’s an app developed by a Palestinian which got popular because of recent increasing censorship on TikTok and Instagram against Palestine.
I’m aware. But it’s not just Palestine being censored, it’s currently anything the current U.S administration doesn’t like. So anything anti-trump/Zionist/Israel/ICE falls into this category.
I’m saying the title is misleading because it could be construed as “a social media app/platform specifically made for Palestinians”, which is what most people that haven’t heard of the app before would assume by reading the title alone.
That’s true but most of the hammer is coming down on Palestine content right now. Netanyahu publicly said the goal of the TikTok purchase was to censor for Israel and they’re pulling out all the stops. ICE content isn’t nearly as censored as Palestine content atm
Palestine is just one topic the US is bashing down. The common theme out there us US censorship and control.
The most common theme of censorship worldwide is most certainly Palestine.
Yes its all about you
It’s back I am downloading it now. Good guy google with the streisand effect.
E: Oh it’s just isreal hating which is fun and all but doesn’t get anyone anywhere but a list lol
I just downloaded it from my playstore
No website is certainly a choice
