Why Frank McCourt wants to spend $20 billion on tiktok

If billionaire Frank McCourt succeeds in buying Tiktok, the first thing he has to do is call his wife. second? He would tell his 9-year-old daughter – who kept asking her when at last Like her classmates, it is available on popular video platforms – “Yes, dear. You can use Tiktok now.”

When talking to Quartz, McCourt was frank and plain, because he restored the internet Original ideal Just like he wants to see them. In recent months, he has Forbes arrive entrepreneur About his sweep $20 billion PLAn takes over Tiktok, strips its opaque algorithms, and rebuilds the platform on a clean, open stack where users have data. But, like his possible celebration plans, deeper stories are more personalized.

More than a decade ago, McCourt experienced a bruised, very public divorce that cost him the Los Angeles Dodgers and made him a tabloid. This experience is a frustrating experience that reshapes how he sees power, privacy, and what it means to expose online. So what he is building now Project freedomhis 501(c)(3) is more than just a commercial enterprise. Instead, it is a lens of redemption – for the Internet, perhaps himself – driven by a belief in a better digital world. For a person in the seventies, that’s enough reason to reorder.

Not your average deal

But, no matter what, how exactly does a person buy a tiktok? McCourt admits that this is not a typical sale.

In 2024, Congress passed Bipartisan law The barbarians are asked to divest Tiktok or face a nationwide ban in the United States, citing national security concerns about Chinese ownership of the app and the data that ensues access to nearly 200 million U.S. users. The law gives the company a deadline for sale and entrusts the executive branch. After that, President Donald Trump took office again and just met Tiktok’s political power Extended deadline Many times – recently to June 19 – left the platform’s fate and McCourt’s bid in a long time.

Even so, McCourt is still hopeful. He was exposed to potential purchases like an experienced trader: although Tiktok is a private company, it formed a coalition of investors, hiring bankers and lawyers, and established a detailed financial model. His team then formally submitted a $20 billion bid to Pineder and the U.S. Department of Justice. Bytedance acknowledged receiving the offer, but has not responded further. McCourt’s group is the only group to submit a formal bid, as far as he knows Larry Ellison of Oracle – Continue to hover from the sidelines.

A fundamental alternative

McCourt explained that the purchase would be an opportunity to “recenter” the Internet, which initially “starts with a simple protocol.” Too early on, big tech companies profited from collecting user data and setting new and disturbing specifications for who has what. McCourt is outspoken: “Why not empowering the protocols for users?” He provides an exhaustive structural criticism: Today’s Internet is designed to serve devices and companies rather than people.

“Data is our personality. That’s all about us,” he said. “We should be people who provide the service technology platform for terms of service, not the other way around.”

With this task in mind, Liberty Project has designed another option over the past four years Called DSNP (Distributed Social Network Protocol). Unlike Big Tech’s walled garden, DSNP allows people to identify, content and connect between applications. McCourt envisions a “verifiable internet” where people are not imitated or lose control of their data every time they register a new app or want to order a dinner. Ethics related to engineering and related to engineering.

Tiktok without algorithm?

Thus, the architecture of an Internet with user authorization already exists, which, as McCourt sees, gives his Tiktok bid a practical advantage. He doesn’t want Tiktok’s algorithm, which most people see as a secret seasoning for the platform and is controlled by China’s export law, so it’s unlikely to be approved for sale. Instead, McCourt wants to migrate Tiktok’s large U.S. user base to Project Liberty’s special infrastructure, turning applications from privacy headaches to a model of how the internet works.

Refreshingly, McCourt doesn’t want to run Tiktok himself – he doesn’t want to be the CEO of a social platform. Part of his bidding process involves choosing a management team. He also spent time directly meeting Tiktok’s top 20 influencers to articulate his vision: A creator is not trapped in a closed ecosystem, but has access to detailed audience analytics and moves its content and followers from one platform to another. If formulated, this will alleviate the long-term pain points for creators frustrated by platform lockdown. McCourt believes that this also makes his bid different.

Critics and cracks

When asked what he said to those who claimed Tiktok’s algorithm yes Product, he did not hesitate: “No, no. us It’s a product. “He pointed out the irony of China itself Essentially forbidding one’s youth Tiktok is used when Americans consume a large amount of money. “It’s not good for young people,” he said. “Feed our sugar, if not cracked. It hurts the United States.”

Not everyone believes that alternative structures work. Leigh Stein, author and creator of Tiktok Upcoming novels Set in Tiktok Hype House, it is a dissident. “The fact that McCoutt admits he has never used Tiktok clearly shows that he knows little about the relevance of proprietary algorithms to the platform,” she said in an email to Quartz. “Tiktok’s algorithm is so powerful in predicting and expecting user preferences that every other single social media platform tries to copy it by adding a page that suits you (Twitter/X) and changing the distribution of its reels (Instagram).

But in order to test McCourt’s paper in reality, that a user will linger even on a changing platform, his bid must be successful first.

A different tiktok, a different world

Meanwhile, McCourt believes that Tiktok’s temperance will be better for everyone if it is not governed by any central system. His version of Tiktok will allow users to use moderation alone. He envisions a platform where individuals choose their own interests and obtain well-planned content streams through third parties, who earned him a metaphor for “a seal of good housekeeping approval,” which shows that their streams are trustworthy and valuable. Otherwise, he said: “Social media is an angry machine.”

The rise of AI will only make his mission more urgent. For McCourt, the rapid adoption of LLM is only the next stage of the centralized internet, the company (not users) control tools. “AI agents, who do they work for?” he asked, and this provocative question clearly made them active. “Not us.”

Whether his daughter uses Tiktok or not, he hopes she can enjoy a better internet than he knows. This is why he is back now: not building a platform for himself, but to be correct. He told Quartz that the mission was “larger than me.”