Real estate billionaire Frank McCourt is organizing a bid to buy TikTok, while ByteDance, the app’s China-based parent company, faces a possible ban in the US if it doesn’t sell the platform next year.
McCourt, former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and executive chairman of investment firm McCourt Global, said Wednesday that he is crafting an offer for his organization, Project Liberty, to acquire TikTok “with the goal of putting people and data empowerment at the heart of the platform’s design and purpose.”
He is proposing to migrate the popular social media platform to an open-source digital protocol, according to a press release.
“The foundation of our digital infrastructure is broken and it’s time to fix it,” McCourt said in a statement. “We can and must do more to safeguard the health and well-being of our children, families, democracy and society.”
“We see this potential acquisition as an incredible opportunity to catalyze an alternative to the current technological model that has colonized the Internet,” he added.
Project Liberty, which McCourt Global describes as “a far-reaching, $500 million initiative to transform the way the Internet works,” already has an open-source protocol at its fingertips.
The organization oversees the Decentralized Social Network Protocol, an “open protocol and potential standard for social media,” according to its website.
McCourt’s bid to buy TikTok has the support of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, according to Wednesday’s press release.
“The web I invented was to provide power and value to individuals, something they don’t have right now,” Berners-Lee said in a statement. “Users must have the ability to control their own data and share it with other people and organizations as they wish.”
“A TikTok that uses open internet protocols like Solid will embrace the critical values of privacy, data sovereignty and user mental health,” he added, referring to the open source protocol he leads.
McCourt is not the only businessman looking to acquire TikTok. Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who previously said he was putting together a group to buy the app, said last week that he is still “very interested.”
The interest in TikTok comes in the wake of a new law, signed by President Biden last month, requiring ByteDance to sell the app within about a year or face a ban from U.S. networks and online app stores.
However, TikTok and ByteDance are suing to block the law, which they say violates the First Amendment.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
