On January 19, a ban on the continued operation of the short video platform TikTok in the United States comes into force, unless its owner, the Chinese company ByteDance, agrees to sell the service to any American company before that day. Without waiting for this date, businessman Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty group announced on Thursday that it had sent an offer to purchase the service to its owner, CNBC writes.
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“We put forward ByteDance’s proposal to realize Project Liberty’s vision to reimagine TikTok – based on an American technology stack that puts people first,” McCourt said. He emphasized that in the future the platform will not rely on the current algorithm. Users’ digital safety will be a priority, and millions of Americans will be able to continue using the platform.
A Project Liberty spokesman said the group was not disclosing the financial terms of the offer and confirmed that ByteDance had received the offer.
Billionaire Frank McCourt, who made his fortune in real estate, is the founder of Project Liberty, an initiative aimed at creating a “healthier, more equitable internet.” Back in May last year, he announced plans to buy TikTok in order to “to create an alternative to the existing technological model that has colonized the Internet”. Project Liberty intends to move TikTok to an open source platform that will give users more control over their data.
The initiative is partnering with investment banking group Guggenheim Securities and law firm Kirkland & Ellis. It is supported by digital security advocates, investor Kevin O’Leary and the creator of the World Wide Web (www protocol) Tim Berners-Lee.
A US law passed last year to protect Americans from apps controlled by unfriendly foreign countries requires TikTok to split from its parent company, ByteDance, under threat of a ban.
TikTok appealed the law to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which after review ruled in favor of the defendant because the government’s arguments in favor of the ban, citing a threat to national security, were sufficiently convincing. It was previously reported that ByteDance would rather close the service in the US than sell it to anyone.
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