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Just 10 days before the US ban on TikTok goes into effect, businessman Frank McCourt’s nonprofit online advocacy organization Freedom project announced on Thursday that it has submitted an offer to buy the social networking site from Chinese technology company ByteDance.
Project Liberty and its partners, known as “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” plan to restructure the app to live on an American-owned platform and prioritize users’ digital security, the project said in a statement. statement.
“We selected ByteDance to deliver on Project Liberty’s vision for a reimagined TikTok — one built on an American-made technology stack that puts people first,” McCourt, founder of Project Liberty, said in a statement. “By supporting the platform, not relying on TikTok’s current algorithm and avoiding a ban, millions of Americans can continue to use the platform.”
A spokesperson for Project Liberty said the nonprofit would not disclose the financial terms of the offer, but confirmed that ByteDance had received an offer.
CNBC has reached out to TikTok for comment.
The Supreme Court will listen to oral arguments on the ban, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden last April on Friday. ByteDance has repeatedly refused to sell TikTok and has challenged the law on First Amendment grounds.
The case reached the court system. Most recently, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the law on Dec. 6, writing that the government’s national security justification for the ban was sufficiently compelling.
On December 9 filing a lawsuitTikTok said the ban would cost US small businesses and social media creators $1.3 billion in revenue and profits in just one month, and that more than 7 million US users do business on TikTok.
The ban, known as the Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act, prohibits the distribution and maintenance of an app while it is owned by China.
The People’s Bid for TikTok aims to move TikTok to an open-source platform that gives users more control over their data, as part of Project Liberty’s mission to create a more user-friendly internet.
The initiative works with investment banking group Guggenheim Securities and law firm Kirkland & Ellis. His supporters include digital security advocates, investor Kevin O’Leary and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.
