Billionaire businessman and real estate mogul Frank McCourt announced Tuesday that his Project Liberty organization is building a consortium to buy TikTok’s U.S. business.
McCourt is working with the investment bank Guggenheim Securities to organize the bid “with the goal of placing people and data empowerment at the center of the platform’s design and purpose,” Project Liberty announced on Tuesday.
Shou Zi Chew, chief executive officer of TikTok Inc., speaks during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. Photographer: Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Additionally, the former Los Angeles Dodgers owner is also working in consultation with the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, as well as “world-renowned technologists, academics, community leaders, parents, and engaged citizens.”
If the sale is successful, McCourt said his plan is to “rearchitect” TikTok’s platform and allow U.S. users “to reclaim agency over their digital identities and data by proposing to migrate the platform to a new digital open-source protocol.”
“The foundation of our digital infrastructure is broken, and it’s time to fix it,” McCourt said. “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 tech model that has colonized the internet,” the billionaire added.
McCourt said the United States “has long been the global driver of ground-breaking innovation, and I encourage anyone who’s interested in reclaiming your data from Big Tech to engage with us and take a step forward to redefine the future of the internet for the people.”
As Breitbart News reported, other potential candidates include former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has also expressed interest in building an investor group to buy TikTok from its parent company, Chinese tech giant ByteDance. Former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick also revealed that he has been pitching potential investors, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Last week, however, TikTok and ByteDance filed a lawsuit in response to the U.S. sell-or-ban legislation recently signed by President Joe Biden, which gives the Chinese company nine months to sell the app or face a ban in the United States.
Moreover, the Chinese companies have also suggested they wouldn’t be able to sell the app even if they wanted to, indicating that they are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). “In reality, there is no choice,” they said.
Notably, that reveal essentially drives the U.S. government’s point home with regards to its concern involving national security.
“The Chinese government has made clear that it would not permit a divestment of the recommendation engine that is a key to the success of TikTok in the United States,” TikTok and ByteDance said.
“China’s export control rules cover ‘information processing technologies’ such as ‘personal interactive data algorithms,'” the foreign companies added.
As Breitbart News reported, the sell-or-ban legislation came to fruition in response to TikTok being widely considered a national security threat by U.S. lawmakers in both the Republican and Democrat Party, given that its parent company is controlled by Chinese communists.
TikTok has also shown itself to be a physical danger to kids and teens, and is facing multiple lawsuits brought by several mourning families who say the Chinese social media platform is directly responsible for the deaths of their children.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.