Frank McCourt, civic entrepreneur, executive chairman of McCourt Global and founder of Project Liberty, speaks at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival in New York on May 22, 2024.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
Frank McCourt said that his Project Liberty consortium, which offered to buy TikTokhe would be comfortable sharing ownership of the app as long as it is based on technology developed by his non-profit organization.
“I agree with everything that is legal … and the US government agrees,” McCourt told CNBC in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
McCourt’s statements come after President Donald Trump said last week that he would like the US to have a “50% joint venture ownership position” in TikTok.
Supreme Court last week supported the law demanding that ByteDance divest itself of its ownership of TikTok or the face effective prohibition. Because TikTok was not sold by the Sunday deadline set by the law, the app was closed to US users and removed from the Apple and Google app stores. But TikTok began restoring some services on Sunday after Trump said he would sign an executive order delaying the federal ban on the app, which he did on Monday.
The executive order allows TikTok to continue operating for another 75 days.
Despite all the twists and turns, McCourt said he is open to any commercial deal, including a 50% stake rather than full ownership.
“I’m not going to be there to make the decisions. You know, this is President Trump’s deal now it’s in his … administration, and you know, it’s all going to be worked out,” McCourt said.
“We’re not flexible about the values and principles of the Liberty project, are we?” he added. “We are completely flexible about commercial arrangements, as long as they comply with the law.”
McCourt’s condition is that TikTok must run on a technology called Decentralized Social Networking Protocol, or DSNP, which is overseen by the Project Liberty Institute, a nonprofit founded by the billionaire.
Focus on user data
McCourt has been a critic of the way social networks and Internet companies collect user data and target them with ads. He said the current model, where the user has little control over their own data, needs to change.
DSNP is focused on these changes. The protocol is a technology on which third-party developers can build applications, but users can choose how their data is used and who can access it.
If they don’t like a particular app, they can migrate their content and data to another service built on top of DSNP.
McCourt’s goal is to buy TikTok and put it on DSNP.
“The user experience would be very similar, with one big exception — owning your identity and your data and your relationships would be very different from how Tiktok currently works,” McCourt said.
“So if Project Liberty, or anyone else … buys US Tiktok and does a bad job, the underlying technology will allow that entire user base to move to another app that does a better job,” he added.
Project Liberty offered to buy TikTok without its core algorithm.
Project Liberty is “not interested in the algorithm or Chinese technology,” McCourt said, though he acknowledged that TikTok is “worth less” without the algorithm. Many experts have said that TikTok’s success is largely due to its algorithm that keeps users hooked on the app.
Other customers are spinning
It is unclear whether ByteDance will sell TikTok or whether China will agree to any sales of the app in the US
Project Liberty is organizing an offer for TikTok with a consortium of other investors. They call it the People’s Bid For TikTok, but there are other potential buyers.
Trump said Tuesday he would consider the possibility Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle President Larry Ellison buying TikTok. Comments come later report that the Chinese government was considering a plan that would include Musk taking over operations.
YouTube star MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, along with a group of investors are also preparing to make a bid for TikTok, his lawyer confirmed to various media outlets this week.
— CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian, Hakyung Kim and Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
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