Skip to content Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
TikTok is officially live the cutting blockfriends
Last Friday, a federal appeals court upheld a law that could result in the app being banned from operating in the United States next month. Even if President Joe Biden decides to extend that deadline by an additional 90 days, TikTok is still on a fairly tight schedule to find a way out of this mess.
Earlier this year, I spoke with Frank McCourt for this newsletter on its offer to buy TikTok. After the events of last week, I thought it was a good time to check in with him. Plus, I got some insight into how creators are preparing for a post-TikTok future.
let’s talk
This is an edition of the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
There are three options for TikTok at this point. The company could win an appeal, forget about all this, and go back to business as normal (eventually). Come next year, the app could be banned. Or, someone with a lot of money could buy TikTok’s business in the United States outside of ByteDance. Wednesday afternoon, my colleague Zeyi Yang and I spoke to Frank McCourt, the billionaire former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers who wants to do just that.
McCourt’s motivation is not only to save TikTok, but to strengthen his personal project. Through his Freedom Project initiative, he has made what he calls a “people’s offer”, bringing together a variety of investors and groups who share in his vision of a more open web. To achieve this, it applies Project Liberty’s Decentralized Social Network Protocol, or DSNP, to TikTok. The protocol will allow users to export their friends and followers to a new TikTok. And after the court’s decision on Friday, McCourt is more confident than ever that his team will soon be running and possibly rebuilding the app.
In our conversation, McCourt argued that a sale would make everyone happy, including ByteDance, users and the US government. McCourt has had conversations with potential investors totaling at least $20 billion in potential bids for the app brand, its user base and existing content to scale its vision of an interoperable, more user-friendly Internet. privacy that competes with companies like Meta and Google. He doesn’t “need or want” the algorithm that runs TikTok’s For You page, he says.
When asked if Project Liberty could maintain TikTok’s existing user base without the beloved algorithm, McCourt said, “People don’t know what they don’t have until you show them.”
