After Trump's comments, Frank McCourt is ready to acquire 50% of TikTok

Frank McCourt, social entrepreneur, executive chairman of McCourt Global and founder of Project Liberty, speaks at The Wall Street Journal Future of Everything Festival in New York on May 22, 2024.

Andrew Kelly | Reuters

Frank McCourt said his consortium Project Liberty made a bid to buy TikTokit would be convenient to share ownership of the application if it is hosted on equipment developed by his non-profit organization.

“I’m fine with anything that’s legal … and the U.S. government is fine,” McCourt told CNBC in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

McCourt’s remarks came after President Donald Trump said last week that he would like the US to have “50% ownership in a joint venture” in TikTok.

Supreme Court last week supported the law demanding that ByteDance relinquish ownership of TikTok or face effective prohibition. Because TikTok was not sold by Sunday’s legal deadline, 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 a federal ban on the app, which he did on Monday.

The order allows TikTok to continue operating for another 75 days.

Despite all the twists and turns, McCourt said he was open to any commercial arrangement, including a 50% stake rather than full ownership.

“I’m not going to be the decision maker there. You know, it’s President Trump’s deal, now it’s with his … administration, and you know, it’s going to work 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 the Decentralized Social Network 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 how social media and internet companies collect user data and show them ads. He said the current model, in which the user has little control over their data, must be changed.

DSNP is focused on making 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 has access to it.

If they don’t like a particular app, they can move their content and data to another DSNP-based service.

McCourt’s goal is to acquire TikTok and host it on DSNP.

“The user experience will be very similar, with one big exception — owning your identity, your data, and your relationships will be completely different than how Tiktok currently works,” McCourt said.

“So if Project Liberty or anyone else … buys American 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 made a bid to buy TikTok without its core algorithm.

Project Liberty is “not interested in the algorithm or the Chinese technology,” McCourt said, though he acknowledged that TikTok “costs less” without the algorithm. Many experts say that TikTok’s success has a lot to do with its algorithm, which keeps users hooked on the app.

Other buyers are circling

It is not yet clear whether ByteDance will sell TikTok or whether China will agree to any US sale of the app

The Liberty project is organizing the application for TikTok together with a consortium of other investors. It’s called the People’s Bid on TikTok, but there are other potential buyers.

Trump said Tuesday that he would consider the possibility Tesla General director Elon Musk or Oracle the chairman Larry Ellison acquisition of TikTok. Comments follow report that the Chinese government was considering a plan that would involve Moscow acquiring the operations.

YouTube star MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is also preparing to make a bet on TikTok along with a group of investors, his lawyer confirmed to various media outlets this week.