Digital Rights Weekly Update: 23 - 29 January 2026

Policy Insight

Amid continued crackdowns on Palestinian digital presence, this week also offered a rare policy opening. The rapid migration of users from TikTok to the newly rising UpScrolled platform signals a demand for digital spaces where expression, visibility, and privacy are not structurally undermined. 7amleh has long warned that the US TikTok sale would not improve data protection or freedom of expression, particularly on Palestine, and could instead entrench disinformation and exclusion. In that context, UpScrolled’s emergence presents an opportunity to think proactively about what a progressive platform architecture could look like in practice.

That opportunity unfolds against a backdrop of accelerating technological control. New reporting on Gaza details the expansion of biometric systems, algorithmic classification, and AI-assisted decision-making that govern the movement, visibility, and even survival of Palestinian victims of Genocide. These same companies and tools are now being adopted abroad, from U.S. immigration enforcement (ICE) to the UK’s new police facial recognition programs. What Palestinians experience under occupation is increasingly exported as “best practice” for rights-infringing systems of control elsewhere.

The policy challenge ahead is therefore twofold: supporting alternative platforms that embed transparency, privacy, and accountability from the outset, while collectively pushing regulators and companies to prevent surveillance, censorship, and data exploitation from becoming default features of the digital ecosystem.

News Digest

Israel blocks Al Jazeera, Al-Mayadeen televisions on digital platforms, TV screens

AA

Israeli authorities have ordered the blocking of Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen televisions across digital platforms, TV screens and YouTube. The ban, signed by Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and announced on Sunday, prohibits broadcasting and internet companies, and YouTube from providing services to Al Jazeera and Al-Mayadeen inside Israel. “From today, they (Al Jazeera) and Al-Mayadeen will be blocked in Israel—both on their websites, on television, and on YouTube! And at the discretion of the Minister of Defense, it will also be possible to disrupt them on satellite,” Karhi said on US social media company X.

TikTokers are heading to UpScrolled following US takeover

The Verge

UpScrolled was founded in 2025 by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist, with the goal of giving users the ability to “freely express thoughts,” while “ensuring every post has a fair chance to be seen.” Its website says the platform will remain “impartial” to political agendas, won’t shadowban users or content, and will “uphold social responsibility.” The app’s interface looks like a mix between Instagram and X, allowing you to post and discover photos, videos, and text posts, as well as write private messages to other users. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such a large call to switch to alternative social networks, as TikTokers flocked to apps like RedNote in response to the TikTok ban last year, while other networks, like Bluesky and Mastodon, emerged as popular spots for people looking to get away from X.

ICSPR: “Algorithms of Killing” Reveal How Israel Turned Artificial Intelligence and Global Technology Companies into a Structure of Genocide in Gaza

ICSPR

The International Commission to Support Palestinian People’s Rights (ICSPR) has released an extensive human rights investigation entitled “Algorithms of Killing: How Israel Turned Artificial Intelligence and Global Technology Companies into a Structure of Genocide in Gaza,” prepared by lawyer Rana Majed Hdeib. The investigation exposes an integrated, algorithm-driven system of extermination that represents a profound shift in Israeli military doctrine and has turned the Gaza Strip into an open laboratory for automated warfare. The investigation confirms that what is unfolding in Gaza is not the isolated use of technological tools, but rather a comprehensive system that begins with massive data collection, moves through the digital classification of the Palestinian population, and culminates in killing decisions treated as a “computational process” executed at the push of a button, alongside an almost complete erosion of human judgment, ethical responsibility, and legal accountability.

UK police to use AI facial recognition tech linked to Israel’s war on Gaza

Al Jazeera

The United Kingdom’s controversial rollout of facial recognition technology will rely on software that appears to have already been deployed in Gaza, where it is used by the Israeli army to track, trace, and abduct thousands of Palestinian civilians passing through checkpoints. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced on Monday that British police would massively increase the use of facial recognition technology used for surveillance purposes. Enquiries by Al Jazeera to the Home Office’s procurement agency, Blue Light Commercial, confirmed that the Israeli-based firm Corsight AI had been subcontracted by UK company Digital Barriers to provide the artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition software.

Israel plans large camp for Palestinians in southern Gaza, retired general says

Arab News

Palestinians in Gaza, shattered by two years of Israeli attacks ‌in the enclave, have long faced restrictions on their movement and monitoring of their ‍online activity and phone calls by Israeli surveillance agencies. Nearly all of Gaza’s ‍2 million people have been forced into a narrow coastal strip from which Israeli forces withdrew under the ceasefire and where Hamas ‍has retained control.