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Former Los Angeles Dodgers owner, Frank McCourt, has been revealed as the latest bidder looking to acquire the popular social media app, TikTok, amidst uncertainty regarding its future in the U.S. after President Joe Biden signed a bill that could lead to its nation-wide ban. McCourt, who also heads the Project Liberty organization, announced on Wednesday that he was crafting a consortium to buy TikTok’s operations on U.S. soil, in association with the global investment bank Guggenheim Partners and renowned law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
McCourt sees this potential acquisition as a golden opportunity to present an alternative to the dominant tech model, which he considers as having colonized the internet. McCourt envisages transforming TikTok into a more ethical version of the internet, where people’s data rights are respected and users have more control over their identities and information.
McCourt’s intention to reshape TikTok has attracted backing from leading personalities like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web. The vision also involves a switch to software that works with Project Liberty’s Decentralized Social Networking Protocol to facilitate increased user data control.
The Project Liberty founder, who is worth $1.4 billion per Forbes, has planned to seek funding from several sources including public donations, foundations, endowments, and pension funds. Despite ByteDance’s previous indications of no sale plans for TikTok, McCourt remains hopeful about the acquisition, which could potentially reshape the popular platform in alignment with his ideals of promoting an open data economy.
Interestingly, other major personalities like the former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and investment entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary, famous for his appearances on the TV show “Shark Tank”, have also expressed an interest in acquiring TikTok.
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