TikTok's Future in the US Is Unclear. We Check Back in With the Billionaire Who Wants to Save It

TikTok is officially connected the chopping block, friends.

Last Friday, a national appeals tribunal upheld a instrumentality that could effect successful the app being banned from operating wrong the United States adjacent month. Even if President Joe Biden decides to widen that deadline an further 90 days, TikTok is inactive connected a beauteous choky timeline to find a mode retired of this mess.

Earlier this year, I spoke with Frank McCourt for this newsletter astir his bid to bargain TikTok. After past week’s events, I figured it was a bully clip to cheque backmost successful with him. Plus, I got immoderate penetration connected however creators are preparing for a post-TikTok future.

Let’s speech astir it.

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There are 3 options near for TikTok astatine this point. The institution could triumph an appeal, hide astir each of this, and spell backmost to concern arsenic mean (eventually). Come adjacent year, the app could beryllium banned. Or, idiosyncratic with a batch of wealth could buy TikTok’s US business disconnected of ByteDance. Wednesday afternoon, my workfellow Zeyi Yang and I spoke to Frank McCourt, the billionaire erstwhile proprietor of the Los Angeles Dodgers who wants to bash conscionable that.

McCourt’s information isn’t conscionable to prevention TikTok but to bolster a idiosyncratic task of his. Through his Project Liberty initiative, helium has made what he’s called a “people’s bid,” bringing unneurotic a assortment of investors and groups that stock successful his imaginativeness of a much unfastened web. To execute this, he’d use Project Liberty’s Decentralized Social Networking Protocol, oregon DSNP, to TikTok. The protocol would let for users to export implicit their friends and followers to a caller TikTok. And aft Friday’s tribunal decision, McCourt is much assured than ever that his squad volition soon beryllium moving and perchance rebuilding the app.

In our conversation, McCourt argued that a merchantability would marque everyone happy, including ByteDance, users, and the US government. McCourt has offered $20 cardinal for the app’s brand, its idiosyncratic base, and the existing contented successful bid to standard his imaginativeness of an interoperable, much privacy-friendly net that competes with companies similar Meta and Google. He doesn’t “need oregon want” the algorithm moving TikTok’s For You page, helium says.

When asked if Project Liberty could support TikTok’s existing userbase without the beloved algorithm, McCourt said, “People don’t cognize what they don’t person until you amusement them.”