Category: MIL-OSI

COMMENTARY: By Richard David Hames

Dear warmongers:

You are sleepwalking towards a war in the Middle East that could set the whole world ablaze. Do not pretend you don’t know this.

Your generals know it. Your intelligence agencies know it. Financial markets know it. Every citizen with a memory longer than a news cycle can feel it in their bones.

This is an open letter from a species that wishes to survive. I will be blunt.

1. Halt all preparations for a war of choice against Iran or any other state in the region. Freeze strike planning. Pull back offensive deployments. If you really have evidence of an imminent threat, present it to independent, technically competent, international scrutiny. If you will not do that, the world is entitled to assume this is a manufactured crisis.

2. Put in place binding, monitored arrangements to stop accidents turning into cataclysms: naval and air incident protocols, hotlines that actually work, rules of engagement that favour restraint, not bravado. If you cannot even agree to that, you are not avoiding war — you are courting it.

3. Stop playing God with other people’s governments. Regime‑change schemes — whether by bombing, sanctions that strangle civilians, or covert destabilisation — have left a trail of wrecked societies across the Middle East and beyond. You know the record. You just refuse to learn from it.

4. If you possess nuclear weapons, stop using them as toys for your vanity. Commit — publicly, in law — to never being the first to use them. Make it clear that any nuclear use by anyone, anywhere, will be treated as an unforgivable crime. If you cannot do even that, your talk of “values” is a sick joke.

5. Choke off the money pipeline that keeps this war machine humming: end the revolving door between government and arms manufacturers, subject major arms sales to real global oversight, and stop treating conflict as a business model. As long as war pays, someone will always be lobbying for it.

6. Admit that your own house is not in order. Societies riven by inequality, corruption and polarisation are more prone to lash out abroad. Fix the rot at home instead of reaching for foreign enemies to distract your populations.

7. Above all, drop the delusion that domination is leadership. Real leadership today is the courage to restrain your own power when using it would shatter the fragile systems that keep all of us alive.

You are not emperors. You are temporary stewards of a civilisation perched on the edge of multiple tipping points, and you’re not any good at that either.

If you drag us into yet another avoidable war, with nuclear forces in the background, you are gambling with everything that breathes.

So here it is, without poetry or excuse:

Step back from your stupidity. Submit your claims to scrutiny. Rein in your war machines. Protect those who speak truth. Treat nuclear weapons as the abomination they are. Stop feeding the economy of perpetual conflict.

If you cannot do that, then you only have the right to call yourselves fools.

Richard David Hames is an Australian philosopher-activist, strategic adviser, entrepreneur and futurist, and he publishes The Hames Report on Substack.

[embedded content]

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/open-letter-seven-warning-signals-to-the-global-warmongers-who-are-claiming-to-lead/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Csanád Horváth, PhD Candidate, Radio Astronomy, Curtin University

Cosmic radio pulses repeating every few minutes or hours, known as long-period transients, have puzzled astronomers since their discovery in 2022. Our new study, published in Nature Astronomy today, might finally add some clarity.

Radio astronomers are very familiar with pulsars, a type of rapidly rotating neutron star. To us watching the skies from Earth, these objects appear to pulse because powerful radio beams from their poles sweep our telescopes – much like a cosmic lighthouse.

The slowest pulsars rotate in just a few seconds – this is known as their period. But in recent years, long-period transients have been discovered as well. These have periods from 18 minutes to more than six hours.

From everything we know about neutron stars, they shouldn’t be able to produce radio waves while spinning this slowly. So, is there something wrong with physics?

Well, neutron stars aren’t the only compact stellar remnant on the block, so maybe they’re not the stars of this story after all. Our new paper presents evidence that the longest-lived long-period transient, GPM J1839-10, is actually a white dwarf star. It’s producing powerful radio beams with the help of a stellar companion, implying others may be doing the same.

Enter white dwarf pulsars

Like neutron stars, white dwarfs are the remnants of dead stars. They’re about the size of Earth, but with an entire Sun’s-worth of mass packed in.

No isolated white dwarf has been observed to emit radio pulses. But they have the necessary ingredients to do so when paired with an M-type dwarf (a regular star about half the Sun’s mass) in a close two-star system known as a binary.

In fact, we know such rapidly spinning “white dwarf pulsars” exist because we’ve observed them – the first was confirmed in 2016.

Which raises the question: could long-period transients be the slower cousins of white dwarf pulsars?

More than ten long-period transients have been discovered to date, but they’re so far away and embedded so deep in our galaxy, it’s been difficult to tell what they are. Only in 2025 were two long-period transients conclusively identified as white dwarf–M-dwarf binaries. This was quite unexpected.

However, it left astronomers with more questions.

Even if some long-period transients are white dwarf–M-dwarf binaries, do they radiate in the same way as the faster white dwarf pulsars? And are the long-period transients only visible at radio wavelengths doomed to be a mystery forever?

What we needed is a model that works for both, and a long-period transient with enough high-quality data to test it on.

A uniquely long-lived example

In 2023 we discovered GPM J1839-10, a long-period transient with a 21-minute period. It was the second-ever such discovery, but unlike its predecessor or those found since, it is uniquely long-lived. Pulses were found in archival data going back as far as 1988, but only some of the times that they should have been detected.

As it’s 15,000 light-years away, we can only see it in radio waves. So we dug deeper into this seemingly random, intermittent signal to learn more.

We watched GPM J1839-10 in a series dubbed “round-the-world” observations. These used three telescopes, each passing the source to the next as Earth rotated: the Australian SKA Pathfinder or ASKAP, the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in the United States.

The intermittent signal turned out to not be random at all. The pulses arrive in groups of four or five, and the groups come in pairs separated by two hours. The entire pattern repeats every nine hours.

Such a stable pattern strongly implies the signal is coming from a binary system of two bodies orbiting each other every nine hours. And knowing the period also helps us work out their masses, which all adds up to being a white dwarf–M-dwarf binary.

Checking back, not only were the archival detections consistent with the same pattern, but we were able to use the combined data to refine the orbital period to a precision of just 0.2 seconds.

A heartbeat pattern

Radio data alone tells us GPM J1839-10 is definitely a binary system. What’s more, the peculiar heartbeat of its pulses gives clues to its nature in a way that’s only possible from looking at radio signals.

Inspired by a previous study on a white dwarf pulsar, we modelled GPM J1839-10 as a white dwarf generating a radio beam as its magnetic pole sweeps through its companion’s stellar wind. The varying alignment of the binary bodies with our line-of-sight throughout the orbit accurately predicts the heartbeat pattern.

We can even reconstruct the geometry of the system, such as how far apart the stars must be, and how massive they are.

All told, GPM J1839-10 has the potential to be the missing link between long-period transients and white dwarf pulsars.

Armed with our model, other astronomers have already been able to detect variability at our measured periods in high-precision optical data, despite not being able to distinguish the binary pair.

Research is ongoing on exactly how the emission physics works, and how the broader range of long-period transient properties fit together. However, this is a crucial step towards understanding.

Csanád Horváth receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Natasha Hurley-Walker receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Puzzling slow radio pulses are coming from space. A new study could finally explain them – https://theconversation.com/puzzling-slow-radio-pulses-are-coming-from-space-a-new-study-could-finally-explain-them-272893

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/puzzling-slow-radio-pulses-are-coming-from-space-a-new-study-could-finally-explain-them-272893/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The battle over the Liberal leadership took a dramatic turn late on Friday when Andrew Hastie announced he was pulling out.

His surprise announcement came just a day after a meeting between Hastie and the other aspirant – defence spokesman Angus Taylor – over who should challenge Sussan Ley, ended in stalemate.

Hastie’s action has brought more clarity to the path ahead. At the same time, it has also left it uncertain, at least in the short term.

Will Taylor, who now has a clear run as conservative candidate, move quickly to bring on a spill? Or will he delay? He’s recently been against an early move but now Hastie is out of the way, his thinking may change.

And it will obviously also be a matter of whether he is confident of his numbers. It may be that even some of the conservatives in the party will believe Ley should be given more time.

Taylor ran Ley close after the election. Her failure to cut through has cost her support since then. On the other hand, some Liberals not tied in tightly to either camp may be unimpressed by the recent disrespectful treatment of her by the jostling aspirants. The numbers could be fluid just now.

Party sources did not have a firm take, after the Hastie announcement, on whether things would move quickly, or whether the embattled leader might get a reprieve.

Much could depend on the reactions coming from members of the parliamentary party – already reeling from the fast moving crisis – over the weekend, ahead of the resumption of parliament on Tuesday.

There is a regular Liberal Party meeting on Tuesday. That would be an unfortunate day for a spill if there was an interest rate rise.

Hastie’s retreat follows Thursday’s debacle, when the two aspirants and their conservative factional backers were captured on camera arriving for their Melbourne meeting. It was the worst of looks – a gaggle of men, not a woman to be seen, plotting to overthrow a female leader, before they went on to a memorial for a female former Liberal MP, Katie Allen.

Leadership struggles are always messy but the optics of this one are worse than most.

Sometime after the meeting, Hastie decided he didn’t have the numbers. It is unfortunate he hadn’t been able to come to this conclusion before the Thursday scenes.

He’d been pushed by a group of supporters, and set things up for a challenge, including with a newspaper story saying his wife was OK with him becoming leader (which would take him away a lot from his young family). He overreached – a comment on his poor judgement.

He said in his statement: “Over the past few weeks there has been speculation about the future leadership of the Liberal Party.

“I’ve previously stated that I would welcome the opportunity to serve my party and our country as leader of the Liberal Party.

“But having consulted with colleagues over the past week, and respecting their honest feedback to me, it is clear that I do not have the support needed to become leader of the Liberal Party.

“On this basis, I wish to make it clear I will not be contesting the leadership of the Liberal Party.

“Australia faces massive issues. I have made it my single focus to campaign on critical issues including immigration and energy, and I have no intention of stopping that.”

A cynic might read this as saying while he won’t be running for leader he will continue to make trouble.

Apart from immediate party sentiment, what happens now will be affected by the opinion polls that will come this weekend. One would have to think they would be bad for Ley.

If there were an early ballot and Taylor won, he would come to the leadership when the government is vulnerable on the economy. This week’s inflation numbers were bad. Even if there were not an interest rate rise next week, one would be on the horizon.

Taylor’s natural ground is economics, so that could give him a good start although, it should be noted, he had trouble as shadow treasurer performing against Jim Chalmers last term.

If the conservatives decide not to move quickly against Ley, that buys her extra time, but it is doubtful she would be able to put it to long-term use. Apart from the pressure from the polls, the Taylor forces and the media would ensure she was always living on borrowed time.

But the nature of Ley is that even under the worst of political circumstances she holds her nerve, trying to keep the wolves at bay, one day after another.

The “wolves” of course are not just in the Liberal ranks. Ley is also trying to deal with the Nationals, who shattered the Coalition last week. She would like to put the team together again, without giving ground over the issue of shadow cabinet solidarity that triggered the breach.

On Friday she allocated to Liberal shadow ministers the portfolio responsibilities given up by the Nationals when they split.

This is only a temporary arrangement, she said. It gives a window for a Nationals rethink. Once things are set in stone, it would be harder to bring the Coalition back together – which some Liberals and some Nationals want to do and others, in both parties, don’t want to happen.

If there is no move for reconciliation, Ley says she will announce a new full shadow ministry in a week, elevating Liberal backbenchers to permanently fill vacancies.

That’s of course assuming she is there in a week.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. View from The Hill: Hastie pulls out but Liberal leadership battle remains in flux – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-hastie-pulls-out-but-liberal-leadership-battle-remains-in-flux-274743

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/view-from-the-hill-hastie-pulls-out-but-liberal-leadership-battle-remains-in-flux-274743/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Breadon, Program Director, Health and Aged Care, Grattan Institute

Federal and state governments have finally resolved their long-running standoff on public hospital funding.

The deal struck at National Cabinet on Friday includes a A$25 billion boost to hospital funding, and state government commitments on disability services for children.

But while public hospitals will get more money, there’s no clear plan to manage surging costs and rising demand.

Let’s take a look at what’s been agreed, and what’s still missing.

But first – how did we get here?

The states run public hospitals, but both the federal government and the states fund them. Since 2011, a series of deals called National Health Reform Agreements has set out how that funding works.

From 2017, under the second five-year agreement, federal spending growth was capped at 6.5%. That has left the states paying for around three quarters of cost growth since then.

In December 2023, National Cabinet committed to reversing that trend. The federal government agreed to increase its share of spending from around 40% to 42.5% by 2030, and then to 45% by 2035.

The plan also tied hospital funding to progress on disability reforms, including states delivering foundational supports outside the NDIS.

But when the 2020 agreement expired last year, governments failed to land a new five-year deal. Instead, they agreed to a one-year extension for 2025–26, with the Commonwealth providing an additional $1.7 billion.

Since then, there has been a fierce debate between the two sides, often spilling out into public accusations.

The federal government argued it has put record funding on the table. And Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called on states to rein in hospital cost growth, which has surged higher in recent years, helping to blow a hole in the federal budget.

The states countered that long-term funding promises are too far-off for a system in crisis today. They have also pointed to challenges stemming from failures in federal government systems.

This includes thousands of “stranded patients” stuck in hospital for weeks or months because they can’t get aged care places, or disability supports. It means up to one in ten public hospital bed days are being used by patients who shouldn’t be there.

What’s the deal?

The federal government has now agreed to boost public hospital spending by $25 billion over five years. Its total spending is expected to be $220 billion from 2026–27 to 2030–31, so the increase is 12%. It means the federal government’s share of total spending should rise.

The investment has been welcomed by state governments and it’s badly needed as demand for care, the cost of care, and wait times have all been rising sharply.

Some media has reported a federal commitment of $2 billion to help get stranded patients out of hospital and into aged care, but this has not been formally announced.

In return for federal investment in public hospitals, the states have agreed to match $2 billion in federal funding for the Thriving Kids program. The program will provide support outside the NDIS for children with developmental delay and disability. Its start date will be pushed back by three months.

All governments agreed to aim for NDIS cost growth of 5–6% a year, down from the previous target of 8%, and well below the current growth rate of 10%.

What’s missing?

A last-minute deal on hospital funding is welcome, as is progress on NDIS reform. But a rare opportunity to commit to substantive national health reform may have been missed.

An independent review of the last deal, commissioned by the federal, state and territory health ministers, found that although it is called a “National Health Reform Agreement”, the deal is really just a public hospital financing mechanism.

The review recommended 45 changes, arguing that the next agreement must be more than narrow and transactional, achieving real changes such as shifting care out of hospitals, driving innovation in health care, and joining up a fragmented system.

Even the main focus of these narrow agreements – the mechanics of prices and funding for public hospital care – should be improved to promote hospital productivity and reduce the length of patients’ hospital stays.

If you want national reform, it helps to buy it. This $25 billion deal will help secure new foundational supports for children. But it’s still not clear if much-needed reforms to public hospitals have been agreed.

The National Cabinet announced that the new agreement “has key reforms embedded throughout to make Australia’s hospital and health-care system more effective, efficient and equitable”.

With public hospital costs rising by $3 billion a year, and hospitals around the country under strain as Australia’s population gets bigger, older, and sicker, those reforms are increasingly urgent. A full assessment of today’s agreement will have to wait until they are revealed.

Grattan Institute has been supported in its work by government, corporates, and philanthropic gifts. A full list of supporting organisations is published at www.grattan.edu.au.

Elizabeth Baldwin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The government has promised a $25 billion boost to hospital funding – but only hints at real reform – https://theconversation.com/the-government-has-promised-a-25-billion-boost-to-hospital-funding-but-only-hints-at-real-reform-274617

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/the-government-has-promised-a-25-billion-boost-to-hospital-funding-but-only-hints-at-real-reform-274617/

Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

By Agnese Boffano in London

As Meta, TikTok, Instagram and X continue to dominate online social spaces, a new platform called UpScrolled has entered the scene.

It is not built around dances or memes, but instead positions itself as a space promising fewer shadowbans and greater freedom of political expression, particularly for pro-Palestinian voices.

So, what is it exactly, and why are users switching?

UpScrolled was launched in July 2025 by Palestinian-Australian app developer Issam Hijazi.

At first glance, the platform feels familiar. It features an up and down scrolling video feed reminiscent of TikTok, alongside profile pages, comments and direct messaging features similar to Instagram.

The similarities, however, appear to end there. Unlike major platforms where opaque algorithms determine which content is amplified and which is buried, UpScrolled claims to operate differently.

The platform describes itself as a space where “every voice gets equal power”, promising to operate without “shadowbans, algorithmic games, or pay-to-play favouritism”, according to its website.

In an interview with Rest of World, Hijazi said the motivation behind the launch was the overwhelmingly pro-Israel content he saw being promoted on more established platforms following 7 October 2023.

Working for what he described as big tech companies at the time, Hijazi expressed deep frustration.

“I could not take it anymore. I lost family members in Gaza, and I did not want to be complicit. So I was like, I am done with this, I want to feel useful,” he said.

The Tech for Palestine incubator, an advocacy project that funds technology initiatives supporting the Palestinian cause, has publicly backed the platform.

Moderation without the black box
Hijazi said UpScrolled’s content moderation process differs from other social media platforms in that it does not selectively censor particular groups or viewpoints.

Content deemed illegal, such as the sale of narcotics or prostitution, is removed, but when it comes to free speech, the approach is rooted in transparency, ethics and equal treatment.

According to 7amleh, the Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media, major tech platforms such as Meta have consistently engaged in a “systemic and disproportionate censorship of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian content”. This includes the removal of posts, restrictions on account visibility and, in some cases, permanent bans.

Throughout the war on Gaza, numerous Palestinian organisations, activists, journalists, media outlets and content creators were targeted over their pro-Palestine views.

Bisan Owda, an award-winning Gaza-based journalist with more than 1.4 million followers on TikTok, is among the most prominent recent examples, whose account was reportedly permanently banned earlier this week — but has now been reinstated after a global outcry.

Critics argue that censorship concerns extend beyond the Palestinian issue, affecting other sensitive topics, including criticism of US government policies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

High profile commentators critical of the Trump administration have reported what they describe as a systematic effort to remove or suppress their videos and content.

[embedded content]
It’s Bisan from Gaza . . . why the truth is so dangerous.     Video: AJ+

Users flock to UpScrolled
Users frustrated with big tech’s control over online narratives have increasingly turned to the new platform.

UpScrolled has reached number one in the social networking category of Apple’s App Store in both the US and the UK.

As of Tuesday, the app had been downloaded around 400,000 times in the US and 700,000 times globally since its launch. An estimated 85 percent of those downloads occurred after January 21 alone, according to data from marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

The Palestinian-founded app has also seen a surge in downloads following the recent acquisition of TikTok by American billionaire Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle.

Ellison is a prominent supporter of Israel and maintains close ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has also financially backed the Israeli military, including a $16.6 million donation made during a 2017 gala organised by the Friends of the Israeli Forces.

The timing of UpScrolled’s rise has therefore not gone unnoticed. The platform appears to have capitalised on widespread frustration and anger over biased content moderation, offering an alternative built around transparency and user control.

The app remains a work in progress, with users having reported crashes and server overloads amid its rapid growth over the past week.

Still, UpScrolled poses a challenge to dominant platforms and highlights a growing appetite for social media spaces that give users greater control over what they see and share.

Republished from the Middle East News Agency (MENA) and The New Arab.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/upscrolled-the-australian-pro-palestine-platform-shaking-up-global-social-media/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley on Friday allocated responsibilities formerly held by the Nationals to existing Liberal shadow ministers on a temporary basis.

This will get the opposition through the next parliamentary week, starting Tuesday. It also gives the Nationals a chance to rethink their split of the Coalition, if they choose.

But if there is no move for reunification, Ley declared she would appoint new Liberal shadow ministers before Monday of the following week. This would further entrench the split, making a rapprochement much more politically complicated.

The parliamentary Liberal party has its regular meeting on Tuesday. Although on balance, a move for a leadership spill is not expected, the situation is unpredictable.

Ley said in a statement: “With several upcoming parliamentary sittings, including Senate Estimates, the Liberal Leadership Group has met and agreed that the finalisation of longer term shadow ministerial arrangements is also required.

“It is intended that these acting arrangements cease before the second February sitting week commences (Monday 9 February), when I appoint a further six parliamentarians to serve in the Shadow Cabinet and two in the outer Shadow Ministry, on an ongoing basis.

“There is enormous talent in the parliamentary Liberal Party and my party room is more than capable of permanently fulfilling each and every one of those roles.”

Ley said the Nationals’ decision to leave the Coalition was “regrettable and unnecessary” and stressed again the “door remains open”.

“The Liberal and National parties exist to serve the Australian people and the maintenance of a strong and functioning relationship between both is in the national interest — whether we are in a formal Coalition or not.”

Nationals Leader David Littleproud responded to Ley’s request earlier this week for a leadership meeting before parliament resumes by saying he was unavailable until after Monday’s Nationals meeting dealt with the call for a spill by Queenslander Colin Boyce.

Ley said: “I understand and respect his decision to await his party’s consideration of a forthcoming spill motion. Following Monday’s parliamentary meeting of The Nationals, I will attempt to meet with whoever is elected as their leader.”

Littleproud’s leadership is not under threat at the meeting.

The temporary responsibilities existing frontbenchers take on are:

• Shadow Treasurer Ted O’Brien: assistant treasurer and financial services

• Shadow Foreign Minister Michaelia Cash: trade, investment and tourism

• Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston: agriculture, fisheries and forestry

• Shadow Energy Minister Dan Tehan: resources and northern Australia

• Shadow Special Minister of State James McGrath: infrastructure, transport, regional development, local government and territories

• Shadow Defence Minister Angus Taylor: veterans’ affairs

• Shadow Environment Minister Angie Bell: water and emergency management.

With leadership aspirants Andrew Hastie and Taylor failing at a Thursday meeting to reach an agreement about who would challenge Ley, the Liberals are in a holding pattern.

Ley, who is usually constantly giving news conferences and interviews, has made no media appearances for a week.

Thursday’s footage of the Hastie-Taylor meeting has added to the dreadful publicity around the Liberals, especially the message it sent to women: an all-male gathering to talk about rolling a female leader, held on the day of the memorial service for a much-respected female former Liberal MP. And then the outcome was a stalemate.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: 2 aspirants who are unlikely to suit the times vie for the Liberal leadership

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Sussan Ley fills frontbench holes temporarily, giving a brief window for Nationals to rethink Coalition split – https://theconversation.com/sussan-ley-fills-frontbench-holes-temporarily-giving-a-brief-window-for-nationals-to-rethink-coalition-split-274030

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/sussan-ley-fills-frontbench-holes-temporarily-giving-a-brief-window-for-nationals-to-rethink-coalition-split-274030/

By Agnese Boffano in London

As Meta, TikTok, Instagram and X continue to dominate online social spaces, a new platform called UpScrolled has entered the scene.

It is not built around dances or memes, but instead positions itself as a space promising fewer shadowbans and greater freedom of political expression, particularly for pro-Palestinian voices.

So, what is it exactly, and why are users switching?

UpScrolled was launched in July 2025 by Palestinian-Australian app developer Issam Hijazi.

At first glance, the platform feels familiar. It features an up and down scrolling video feed reminiscent of TikTok, alongside profile pages, comments and direct messaging features similar to Instagram.

The similarities, however, appear to end there. Unlike major platforms where opaque algorithms determine which content is amplified and which is buried, UpScrolled claims to operate differently.

The platform describes itself as a space where “every voice gets equal power”, promising to operate without “shadowbans, algorithmic games, or pay-to-play favouritism”, according to its website.

In an interview with Rest of World, Hijazi said the motivation behind the launch was the overwhelmingly pro-Israel content he saw being promoted on more established platforms following 7 October 2023.

Working for what he described as big tech companies at the time, Hijazi expressed deep frustration.

“I could not take it anymore. I lost family members in Gaza, and I did not want to be complicit. So I was like, I am done with this, I want to feel useful,” he said.

The Tech for Palestine incubator, an advocacy project that funds technology initiatives supporting the Palestinian cause, has publicly backed the platform.

Moderation without the black box
Hijazi said UpScrolled’s content moderation process differs from other social media platforms in that it does not selectively censor particular groups or viewpoints.

Content deemed illegal, such as the sale of narcotics or prostitution, is removed, but when it comes to free speech, the approach is rooted in transparency, ethics and equal treatment.

According to 7amleh, the Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media, major tech platforms such as Meta have consistently engaged in a “systemic and disproportionate censorship of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian content”. This includes the removal of posts, restrictions on account visibility and, in some cases, permanent bans.

Throughout the war on Gaza, numerous Palestinian organisations, activists, journalists, media outlets and content creators were targeted over their pro-Palestine views.

Bisan Owda, an award-winning Gaza-based journalist with more than 1.4 million followers on TikTok, is among the most prominent recent examples, whose account was reportedly permanently banned earlier this week — but has now been reinstated after a global outcry.

Critics argue that censorship concerns extend beyond the Palestinian issue, affecting other sensitive topics, including criticism of US government policies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

High profile commentators critical of the Trump administration have reported what they describe as a systematic effort to remove or suppress their videos and content.

Users flock to UpScrolled
Users frustrated with big tech’s control over online narratives have increasingly turned to the new platform.

UpScrolled has reached number one in the social networking category of Apple’s App Store in both the US and the UK.

As of Tuesday, the app had been downloaded around 400,000 times in the US and 700,000 times globally since its launch. An estimated 85 percent of those downloads occurred after January 21 alone, according to data from marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

The Palestinian-founded app has also seen a surge in downloads following the recent acquisition of TikTok by American billionaire Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle.

Ellison is a prominent supporter of Israel and maintains close ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has also financially backed the Israeli military, including a $16.6 million donation made during a 2017 gala organised by the Friends of the Israeli Forces.

The timing of UpScrolled’s rise has therefore not gone unnoticed. The platform appears to have capitalised on widespread frustration and anger over biased content moderation, offering an alternative built around transparency and user control.

The app remains a work in progress, with users having reported crashes and server overloads amid its rapid growth over the past week.

Still, UpScrolled poses a challenge to dominant platforms and highlights a growing appetite for social media spaces that give users greater control over what they see and share.

Republished from the Middle East News Agency (MENA) and The New Arab.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/upscrolled-the-pro-palestine-platform-shaking-up-social-media/