TikTok rivals Skylight and UpScrolled see surge in downloads amid Trump backlash

Alternatives to TikTok are surging in popularity in the US following a deal that saw the social media app taken over by investors loyal to President Donald Trump.

The apps Skylight and UpScrolled have seen record downloads in recent days amid allegations that TikTok has begun censoring content critical of Trump and his administration.

Last week, ownership of TikTok’s US operations passed from Chinese owner ByteDance to a group of US investors that include the tech giant Oracle, which is led by Trump ally Larry Ellison.

The new ownership, together with accusations about censorship, have led to calls for a boycott of TikTok, which has an estimated 170 million users in the US.

Short-form video app UpScrolled, which has positioned itself as a censorship-free alternative to TikTok, climbed into the top 10 free apps on Apple’s App Store on Tuesday despite its servers being overwhelmed by the sudden interest.

“Well, this is new... You all showed up so fast our servers tapped out,” UpScrolled wrote in a post to Instagram.

“We’re not going to pretend that’s not frustrating, but honestly? We’re kind of emotional about it too.We’re a tiny team building an alternative to the platforms that stopped listening to you.”

TikTok users have complained about words like ‘Epstein’ being censored, while others claim that videos that are critical of Trump or the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Minneapolis have been suppressed.

A probe into these allegations has been launched by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who claims that TikTok may be acting unlawfully by censoring content.

“It’s time to investigate,” he wrote on X. “I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.”

In a statement shared with The Independent, TikTok said that a power outage at one of its data centres had caused a “cascading systems failure” that caused multiple bugs for users.

“We've made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner,” the statement read. “However, the US user experience may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content.

“We're committed to bringing TikTok back to its full capacity as soon as possible. We'll continue to provide updates.”