Real estate developer and philanthropist Frank McCourt announced he is organizing a bid to acquire the TikTok social media platform.
McCourt, who is executive chairman of McCourt Global and a former owner and chairman of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dodger Stadium from 2004 to 2012, has teamed with Guggenheim Securities and the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis on the bid. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is the subject to a recently passed federal law requiring that either sell the platform due to national security grounds regarding its connection to the Chinese government or have the TikTok app banned. ByteDance has filed a legal challenge to declare the new law as being unconstitutional.
“The foundation of our digital infrastructure is broken, and it’s time to fix it,” said McCourt. “We can, and must, do more to safeguard the health and well-being of our children, families, democracy and society,” said McCourt, who also runs the nonprofit Project Liberty. “We see this potential acquisition as an incredible opportunity to catalyze an alternative to the current tech model that has colonized the internet.”
McCourt’s initiative – which he dubbed a “people’s bid” – differs from other interested acquisition parties in that he does not want to acquire TikTok’s algorithm, which has been at the center of the controversy over whether the platform is sharing data about Americans with the Chinese government. Instead, McCourt envisioned transitioning key elements of TikTok to a technical architecture involving software that is compliant with Project Liberty’s Decentralized Social Networking Protocol, which McCourt’s organization defined as “digital public infrastructure which will serve as the bedrock of a more equitable web and support a new era of innovation that empowers people over platforms and serves the common good.”
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