Tech
Social network UpScrolled sees surge in downloads following TikTok’s US takeover
In the wake of TikTok’s U.S. ownership change last week, some users are seeking out alternative platforms. One app gaining traction is UpScrolled, a social network that pledges to remain impartial to political agendas. The app currently ranks 12th overall in Apple’s App Store and second in the social networking category.
UpScrolled blends familiar features from Instagram and X, letting users share photos, videos, and text posts, discover new content, and send direct messages.
The app was founded last year by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist, with the aim of giving users a place to “freely express thoughts, share moments, and connect with others,” according to the app’s website. The team behind the app says they’re “building a platform that belongs to the people who use it — not to hidden algorithms or outside agendas.”
“UpScrolled is the foundation for a digital ecosystem that puts power back into the hands of the people — not the corporations,” Hijazi said in a statement on UpScrolled’s website. “It’s more than just an alternative to Meta, X, or TikTok — it’s a reimagining of what social media should be: a space where creators, communities, and businesses thrive independently, with real control, transparency, and accountability.”
The app, available on both iOS and Android, is grappling with a surge of new users but says it’s scaling to keep up with the demand.
According to data from the market intelligence provider Appfigures, UpScrolled saw approximately 41,000 downloads between Thursday, the day the TikTok deal was finalized, and Saturday, accounting for nearly one-third of its lifetime installs. UpScrolled has seen an average of about 14,000 daily downloads since Thursday, representing a 2,850% increase in daily downloads.
In total, the app has been downloaded 140,000 times to date, with 75,000 of those being U.S.-based installs.
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“Well, this is new … You showed up so fast our servers tapped out,” the company wrote in a post on X. “Frustrating? Yes. Emotional? Also yes. We’re a tiny team building what Big Tech stopped being. Right now we’re scaling on caffeine to keep up with what YOU started. Bear with us. We’re on it.”
The surge comes as TikTok announced last Thursday that it signed a deal with a group of non-Chinese investors to form a majority American-owned joint venture to keep the social app operating in the U.S. TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance owns less than 20% of the new entity, while the venture’s three managing investors — Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment company MGX — each hold a 15% stake. Some users worry that TikTok’s new U.S. investors may have political allegiances to Trump.
Following the takeover, some users accused the app of potentially censoring certain political content. This criticism included a handful of high-profile users, including Senator Chris Murphy and singer Billie Eilish, who raised concerns that TikTok was suppressing or limiting posts criticizing ICE. Additionally, some said they were unable to search for information about ongoing protests in Minneapolis following the killing of Alex Pretti by border patrol agents.
However, TikTok attributed these issues to an ongoing data center outage, which has been impacting its app’s functionality.
Concerns also grew when TikTok released an updated privacy policy that allows the app to track users’ GPS coordinates, among other things. This led to some users encouraging people to delete the app in favor of alternatives, with UpScrolled being one of the popular choices, largely due to its promise to not shadowban anyone and give “every post a fair chance to be seen.”
UpScrolled isn’t the only app that’s seeing a surge in users following the takeover. Skylight, a TikTok alternative built on open source technology, says it has now topped over 380,000 sign-ups and is continuing to grow.
Tech
Revolut eyes valuation of up to $200B in eventual IPO
British neobank Revolut seems to be eyeing a major valuation bump when it eventually goes public. The company is targeting a market cap between $150 billion and $200 billion in an initial public offering, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous investor sources.
The fintech giant, which secured a full banking license in the United Kingdom in March after years of waiting, was most recently valued at $75 billion, up from $45 billion in 2024, in a secondary share sale that made it one of Europe’s most valuable private tech companies.
Revolut’s co-founder and CEO, Nik Storonsky, last week said that the company’s IPO was at least “two years away,” according to Bloomberg.
According to PitchBook and the Financial Times, the company is working on another secondary share sale, scheduled for the second half of 2026, that would value it at more than $100 billion.
As of November 2025, the company had raised a total of $5.89 billion, according to PitchBook. Revolut reported revenue of $6 billion in the financial year ended December 31, 2025, up from $4 billion in 2024. The company’s net profit grew to $1.7 billion, up from $1 billion in 2024, and counted 68.3 million retail customers at the end of 2025.
Revolut declined to comment.
Founded in 2015, Revolut offers a range of services spanning multi-currency accounts, payment and transfer services, crypto products, insurance, and more. The neobank has been pouring truckloads of cash into expanding its operations internationally, and recently applied for a banking license in the United States.
Besides the U.K., Revolut has a banking license in the European Union, and it operates in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Brazil, and the U.S. Revolut launched operations in India last October, is about to start operating in Colombia this year, and has received a banking license in Mexico.
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Tech
Amazon taps Sweden’s Einride for its electric big rigs
Einride is adding 75 of its electric heavy duty trucks to Amazon’s Relay freight network as part of a deal that gives the Swedish startup a toehold in the e-commerce giant’s operations. Einride will also provide charging infrastructure across five locations in the United States, under the agreement announced Tuesday.
Amazon isn’t buying or operating the electric trucks. Instead, Einride will own and manage (using its own Saga AI software) the trucks, which can be used by drivers in Amazon’s Relay freight network. Relay, launched in 2017, is an app that truck drivers can use to book hauling gigs with Amazon.
Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli, who took over as chief nearly a year ago, said working with Amazon is a powerful validation of the startup’s technology and strategic vision.
“By deploying our intelligent platform within one of the world’s most sophisticated logistics networks, we are accelerating growth, while continuing to build industry-leading operational expertise,” he said in a statement.
Einride has gained attention and investment for its two-pronged approach to freight. The company has developed and now operates a fleet of about 200 heavy-duty electric trucks for companies like Heineken, PepsiCo, and Carlsberg Sweden in Europe, North America, and the UAE. It has also developed autonomous pod-like trucks, which stand out for their cab-less design.
The agreement with Amazon doesn’t include the autonomous pods.
Einride has landed this agreement at a critical time: The startup is finalizing a merger with blank-check company Legato Merger Corp. and is expected to go public soon.
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While the agreement might not carry the same weight for Amazon, which has a market cap of $2.7 trillion, it does contribute to its low-carbon goals. Amazon has said it wants to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2040.
“This rollout is an important step forward in addressing one of the toughest challenges we face in decarbonizing our transportation network — electrifying heavy-duty trucking,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We’re excited to continue to collaborate with Einride and learn from these operations as the trucks hit the road.”
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Tech
YouTube expands its AI likeness detection technology to celebrities
YouTube is expanding its new “likeness detection” technology, which identifies AI-generated content, such as deepfakes, to people within the entertainment industry, the company announced on Tuesday.
The technology works similarly to YouTube’s existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users’ uploaded videos, allowing rights owners to request removal or share in the video’s revenue.
Likeness detection does the same, but for simulated faces. The feature is meant to help protect creators and other public figures from having their identities used without their permission — a common problem for celebrities who find their likenesses have been used in scam advertisements.
The technology was first made available to a subset of YouTube creators in a pilot program last year before expanding more broadly to include politicians, government officials, and journalists this spring.

Now YouTube says the technology is being made available to those in the entertainment industry, including talent agencies, management companies, and the celebrities they represent. The company has support from major agencies like CAA, UTA, WME, and Untitled Management, which offered feedback on the new tool.
Use of the likeness detection tool does not require entertainers to have their own YouTube channels.
Instead, the feature scans for AI-generated content to detect visual matches of an enrolled participant’s face. Users can then choose to request removal of the video for privacy policy violations, submit a copyright removal request, or do nothing. YouTube notes that it won’t remove all content, as it permits parody and satire content under its rules.
In the future, the technology will support audio as well, the company says.
Related to this, YouTube has also been advocating for similar protections at a federal level, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in Washington, D.C. This would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized re-creations of an individual’s voice and visual likeness.
The company hasn’t yet said how many removals of AI deepfakes have been managed by the tool so far, but noted in March that the amount of removals was still “very small.”
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