Real-estate mogul says he is putting together a consortium to buy the platform, owned by China’s ByteDance
Billionaire Frank McCourt said he is organizing a bid to acquire TikTok in the U.S., weeks after the passage of a law that could force the social-media platform’s Chinese owner into a sale.
McCourt, a real-estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, said Wednesday that his Project Liberty initiative was working on building a consortium to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations with investment bank Guggenheim Securities.
If successful, McCourt said he planned to retool TikTok to allow individual users to have better control over their digital identities and data. McCourt publicly launched Project Liberty in 2021 to advocate on such matters.
The bid provides an opportunity to “return control and value back into the hands of individuals and provide Americans with a meaningful voice, choice, and stake in the future of the web,” a statement said.
McCourt’s interest in TikTok comes after President Biden signed legislation last month that requires a sale or ban of the popular social-media app by mid-January because of national-security and data-privacy concerns.
TikTok has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law, while Beijing-based ByteDance, the platform’s owner, has said it can’t and won’t sell its U.S. operations by the deadline.
Read the full piece on the WSJ website. Learn more about the bid on Project Liberty’s website.