US billionaire Frank McCourt wants to buy TikTok
TikTok has a new interested party: Frank McCourt, US billionaire and founder of Project Liberty, is considering switching to an open source protocol.
The Project Liberty alliance has expressed an interest in buying TikTok. It wants to convert the platform into an open source protocol.
(Image: Boumen Japet / shutterstock.com)
The former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team and billionaire Frank McCourt is bringing his organization Project Liberty into play in the sale of TikTok. This organization is currently forming a consortium to buy the social media platform.
Project Liberty wants to restructure the short video platform and give community members back control over their digital identity and data, according to the consortium. To this end, the consortium intends to convert the platform to an open-source protocol.
Inventor of the World Wide Web among the supporters
After lively discussions, the US Senate voted by a large majority in favor of the forced sale of TikTok; shortly afterward, President Biden signed a corresponding law. The Chinese TikTok owner ByteDance would have to sell the app to investors by January 19, 2025. Otherwise, TikTok would be banned in the USA. The politicians fear that the Chinese company ByteDance behind TikTok is subject to the will of the Chinese Communist Party. This means that there is a possibility that Chinese authorities could access the data of US users. This would also enable political influence. TikTok itself has repeatedly denied the allegations and intends to take legal action against the decision.
According to the organization, the project is also supported by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, and David Clark, Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. "A TikTok that uses open Internet protocols like Solid will respect the critical values of privacy, data sovereignty and the mental health of users," said Berners-Lee, according to the press release.
Frank McCourt founded Project Liberty in 2021. The almost 100 members of the alliance include the non-profit organization Creative Commons, Reporters Without Borders, the MIT Center for Constructive Communication and Stanford University. "Project Liberty's activities include the release of the open-source Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), a digital public infrastructure that serves as the foundation for a fairer Internet," the statement reads.
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