Billionaire Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty bids for TikTok

Just 10 days before the US ban on TikTok goes into effect, entrepreneur Frank McCourt’s advocacy group Project Freedom announced Thursday that it has submitted a proposal to buy the social media site from Chinese technology company ByteDance.

The Liberty Project and its partners, known as “The People’s Bid for TikTok”, will restructure the app to exist on an American-owned platform and prioritize the digital security of users, the project said in a declaration.

“We submitted a proposal to ByteDance to realize Project Liberty’s vision for a reimagined TikTok — one built on an American-made technology stack that puts people first,” McCourt, the founder of Project Liberty, said in the statement. . “By keeping the platform alive without relying on the current TikTok algorithm and avoiding a ban, millions of Americans can continue to enjoy the platform.”

A spokesperson for the Liberty Project said that the group was not disclosing the financial terms of the offer, but confirmed that ByteDance received the proposal.

CNBC has contacted TikTok for comment.

The Supreme Court will hears oral arguments on the ban, which was signed into law by the president Joe Biden last April, on Friday. ByteDance has repeatedly refused to sell TikTok and appealed the legislation on First Amendment grounds.

The case worked its way through the judicial system. Most recently, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of the law on December 6, writing that the government’s national security justifications for the ban were sufficiently compelling. .

In a December 9 filing in courtTikTok said the ban would cost US small businesses and social media creators $1.3 billion in revenue and earnings in just one month, and that more than 7 million US users do business on TikTok.

The ban, known as the Act to Protect Americans from Foreign Adversarial Controlled Applications, prohibits the distribution and maintenance of the app while under Chinese ownership.

The People’s Bid for TikTok aims to migrate TikTok to an open-source platform that allows users more control over their data, as part of Project Liberty’s mission to build a more empowered Internet for the user.

The initiative partners with the investment banking group Guggenheim Securities and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Its supporters include digital security advocates, investor Kevin O’Leary and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

Correction: An earlier version of this article described the Freedom Project as a for-profit. It is not.