According to multiple well-known news media reports, billionaire real estate tycoon and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt is currently considering acquiring TikTok. While it remains to be seen whether TikTok parent company ByteDance will agree to sell to anyone, McCourt’s background in utopian tech advocacy makes him an interesting figure to enter the race.
U.S. Congress passes legislation March That would force TikTok to be sold or face a total ban in the United States, ostensibly due to national security concerns. ByteDance is based in China, where bipartisan hawks in the new Cold War insist Beijing has the ability to monitor and manipulate TikTok data and allegedly brainwash the 170 million Americans currently using the app.
this is the place potential buyers Now in comes an investor group led by the likes of former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, reality TV host Kevin O’Leary and now Frank McCourt.
“We want all capital to be aligned with values [around] A new, better version of the web where individuals are respected and they own and control their identity and data,” McCourt told traffic light.
McCourt’s utopian vision of the Internet is more than just the ravings of a billionaire. He launched an initiative called the “Freedom Project” in 2021 to advocate for open network protocols and received support from some of the biggest names in the tech world. Semafor’s latest article praises McCourt and says he will “embrace the key values ​​of privacy, data sovereignty, and user mental health.”
McCourt also wrote a book titled Our greatest struggle: reclaiming freedom, humanity and dignity in the digital ageReleased in March, he laid out his case for humanizing the internet. McCourt insists that it all starts with reimagining network infrastructure with new open protocols.
But one of the big questions is: Will ByteDance sell TikTok to U.S. investors? At present, this seems unlikely. TikTok filed a lawsuit last week to block the legislation on First Amendment grounds, and the tech company made a very compelling case. With roughly half of the U.S. population currently using the app, it would literally send shivers down the spines of millions of people if TikTok were suddenly taken away.
But as we all know, the law is a sham and any court in the country can rationalize the most disingenuous rulings as a matter of principle. For the past two decades, the United States has shamed other countries into banning American websites when they expressed national security concerns. Now it’s our turn to ban apps we don’t like, just because we’re being beaten at our own game. Whether someone like McCourt can snap up TikTok amid the chaos remains to be seen.
