Yahoo Finance

Why this former LA Dodgers owner wants to buy TikTok

TikTok was in court earlier this week making its case against the so-called "ban bill" which would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest from the social video app or risk a nationwide ban. Project Liberty Founder Frank McCourt is hoping to acquire the company, and joins Asking for a Trend to lay out his case. "We agree with the government's position. I think it's pretty clear to everyone now that the Chinese Communist Party controls TikTok and that they're holding the information on 170 million Americans, is not a good thing. It's a real threat. And of course, the ability to manipulate 170 million Americans is even more of a threat," McCourt tells Yahoo Finance. He believes that the US government's position will be upheld in court, leaving ByteDance with an important decision to make. "I'm betting they sell it, and I don't want them to shut it down, nor do the 170 million users want it to be shut down because people are using the app. They enjoy the app. That's not the issue. The issue is how people's data is being used," he argues. If McCourt were to acquire TikTok, he would plan to migrate the platform's users to a "new protocol where each individual would control their identity and their data." He emphasizes that he is not interested in the algorithm, saying, "We don't need it, and we don't want it." He adds, "I think we may be the only ones that check all three boxes. And what I mean by that is that we check the CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) box. We're not a national security threat. We're American, not foreign. We check the antitrust box. We're not Big Tech, so we don't have an antitrust issue. And we have built the tech stack that would enable us to onboard the user base of TikTok and do so in a way that actually... gives people control of their identity and their data and so forth." For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend. This post was written by Melanie Riehl