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- Billionaire Frank McCourt is among the parties who have put in a bid for TikTok in the US, and there are reports that he could decentralize the social media giant on Polkadot.
- McCourt is an outspoken critic of Big Tech and has been calling for users to own their data for years, lending credence to the reports about a big shift in TikTok America’s model.
The future of TikTok in the US could be decentralized, and Polkadot is leading the way to become the network that anchors the social media app with 170 million American users.
Frank McCourt, the real estate billionaire renowned as the former owner of Major League Baseball franchise LA Dodgers, is among the parties interested in purchasing the American operations of the Chinese company. TikTok has been forced into a sale by the Biden administration, which has accused the company of cannibalizing Americans’ data for the Chinese government. It’s not the first attempt to sell off the company to American owners, with a previous push by the Trump administration falling through.
McCourt is leading a consortium of individuals and corporations under his Project Liberty umbrella. He has brought on Guggenheim Securities as the investment bank and Kirkland Ellis as the law firm that will take charge of the deal. He says he has been in talks with several interested parties to partner up on the sale, hinting that participation could be open to the public.
An outspoken critic of the data silo model of Big Tech, McCourt told one news outlet that he intends to rebuild the social media platform as “a new and better version of the internet where individuals are respected, and they own and control their identity and their data.”
He doubled down on his intention to transform TikTok from its current model, stating, “We’re talking about a different architecture, a different way of thinking about the internet and how it operates.”
TikTok on Polkadot?
In a press release, McCourt revealed that he intends to rebuild TikTok using tools that his Project Liberty has been working on. One of these is the open-source Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP). Project Liberty believes DSNP is the foundation of equitable internet that puts the user first.
DSNP has already been put to use. In one such implementation, the social media platform MeWe used DSNP to deploy its app on Frequency, a parachain network on the Polkadot blockchain. Frequency has been a parachain since late 2022.
While McCourt didn’t explicitly mention Polkadot or Frequency, the blockchain community believes that it’s only a matter of time before one of the world’s most important platforms is on the network.
McCourt commented:
We want all the capital to be values-aligned [around]a new and better version of the internet, where individuals are respected and they own and control their identity and their data.
Polkadot’s DOT has gained 6.79% in the past day to trade at $7.53 for a market cap of $10.8 billion.
