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Just 10 days before the U.S. ban on TikTok takes effect, businessman Frank McCourt’s online advocacy nonprofit free plan It announced on Thursday that it had submitted a proposal to acquire the social media site from Chinese technology company ByteDance.
The Freedom Project and its partners, dubbed “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” will restructure the app to have a presence on a U.S.-owned platform and prioritize users, the project said in a statement. Digital security. statement.
“We have made a proposal to ByteDance to realize Project Liberty’s reimagined TikTok vision—a vision built on a human-centric technology stack made in the United States,” McCourt, founder of Project Liberty, said in a statement . “By keeping the platform alive and avoiding a ban without relying on the current TikTok algorithm, millions of Americans can continue to enjoy the platform.”
A Project Liberty spokesperson said the nonprofit did not disclose the financial terms of the proposal but confirmed that ByteDance had received the proposal.
CNBC has reached out to TikTok for comment.
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument The ban was signed into law by President Joe Biden on Friday last April. ByteDance has repeatedly refused to sell TikTok and appealed the legislation on First Amendment grounds.
The case has made its way through the judicial system. Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on December 6 in favor of the law, writing that the government’s national security rationale for the ban was sufficiently compelling.
on December 9 court filingTikTok said the ban will cost U.S. small businesses and social media creators $1.3 billion in revenue and profits in just one month, with more than 7 million U.S. users conducting business on TikTok.
The ban, known as the Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act, prohibits the distribution and maintenance of the app if it is owned by China.
People’s Bid for TikTok aims to move TikTok to an open source platform and give users more control over their data, as part of the Freedom Project’s mission to build a more user-empowered internet.
The program is in partnership with investment banking group Guggenheim Securities and law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Its backers include digital security advocates, investor Kevin O’Leary and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.
