Digital Rights Weekly Update: 30 January - 5 February 2026

Policy Insight:

This week, UpScrolled’s rapid growth, now surpassing 2.5 million users, marks a rare moment of digital re-orientation. The migration away from TikTok reflects not only frustration with censorship, but a search for spaces where Palestinian narratives can circulate without structural suppression. Yet alignment alone is not protection. Platforms that promise visibility must also guarantee privacy, data security, and credible governance. Without strong safeguards, even sympathetic platforms risk reproducing the same extraction and exposure that harmed users on Big Tech in the first place. Constructive engagement with UpScrolled’s founders is therefore essential to embed transparency, data minimization, and user protection from the outset.

This opportunity unfolds amid a harsher global reality. From Google’s alleged support to Israeli military AI systems, to venture capital financing automated weapons, user data continues to be transformed into infrastructure for harm. What begins as social interaction becomes material for surveillance, targeting, and political manipulation, whether in Palestine, the U.S., Europe, or beyond.

The policy challenge ahead is not only to resist censorship, but to build digital frameworks that prevent exploitation. Protecting data, ensuring accountability, and confronting Big Tech’s convergence with far-right politics and Israel’s surveillance regime remain central to safeguarding Palestinian digital rights in any platform ecosystem.

News Digest

Google helped Israeli military contractor with AI, whistleblower alleges

The Washington Post

Google’s Gemini AI technology was being used by Israel’s defense apparatus at a time that the company was publicly distancing itself from the country’s military after employee protests over a contract with Israel’s government, according to internal documents included in the complaint. In July 2024, Google’s cloud-computing division received a customer support request from a person using an Israel Defense Forces email address, according to the documents included in the complaint, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August. The name on the customer support request matches a publicly listed employee of Israeli tech firm CloudEx, which the complaint to the SEC alleges is an IDF contractor.

Venture Capitalists Are Using Profits From Genocide to Fund AI-Powered Weapons

Truthout 

Many of the largest VCs that are funding cutting edge AI weapons development for the Pentagon — such as Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Hercules Capital, Shield Capital, and Sequoia Capital — are also investing in Israeli high-tech firms, thus profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. These investments are being made in spite of pleas by Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, that all governments and corporations “completely abstain from, or end, their relationship with this [Israeli] economy of the occupation, especially as it has transformed into an economy of genocide.” The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) lists Shield AI as a corporation profiting from genocide, noting that Israel has been using Shield AI’s Nova 2 drone for “close-quarters indoor combat” in Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian UpScrolled Is Top-Selling Social App Amid Claims of Censorship, TikTok Deal Backlash

The Medialine

The app’s rapid rise coincides with a deal by an investor group led by Larry Ellison, a firm supporter of Israel, to purchase TikTok’s US operations under pressure from US law. Major Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Federations of North America, supported the move, citing antisemitic content on TikTok as a factor driving the need for change. Hijazi, born in Jordan and now living in Australia, has publicly opposed both the sale and what he describes as widespread “shadow-banning” of pro-Palestinian content across major platforms. He has said that 60 members of his family died during the Gaza war and described the conflict as a turning point in his life and career.

Human Rights Watch researchers resign after report on Palestinian right of return blocked

The Guardian

Shakir raised the prospect of resignation if the report was delayed – but also said he offered to make it clearer that the crimes against humanity determination definitively applied only to those communities that were the focus of the research: those most acutely vulnerable as a result of the denial of their right to return, both in the occupied territories and in Syria, Lebanon, and among a subset of Palestinians living in Jordan. Shakir said those offers were rejected. Days before Bolopion took up the position as executive director, he called Shakir to tell him the report would need to be paused. In response, more than 200 HRW employees signed a letter of protest, sent to leadership on 1 December, calling the organization’s “rigorous vetting process” the “cornerstone of our credibility”. Blocking the report, the staffers wrote, could “create the perception that HRW’s review process is open to undue intervention that can reverse decisions taken through the pipeline, undermine trust in its purpose and integrity, set a precedent that work can be shelved without transparency, and raise concerns that other work could be suppressed”. In its statement, HRW said: “Our internal review processes are robust and designed to protect the integrity of our findings. As with any organization conducting such analyses, differences of professional judgment can arise in the process.”