Here’s the most interesting thing about Boston-born real estate developer Frank McCourt’s plan to acquire the US operations of social media titan TikTok: It’s not driven by fears that the Chinese-owned company poses a threat to national security.
Instead it’s all about Project Liberty, McCourt’s plan for a global overhaul of online services aimed at putting internet users — people, not corporations — in control of their personal data. It’s a three-year-old crusade inspired by McCourt’s bitter experiences with social media and backed by $500 million of his own money.
“The entire internet has been colonized by a bunch of large platforms, and one of them happens to be TikTok,” McCourt said in an interview. “We should have an alternative version of the internet where we get to control our identity and our data,” he said, with no interference from anyone, “whether it’s a corporation or the Chinese Communist Party.”
The US Congress opened the door to McCourt last month. Motivated by fears that the Chinese government is using TikTok to spy on US users and spread pro-Chinese propaganda, lawmakers passed a bill to compel TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its operations in the US within 270 days, or cease distribution of TikTok’s hugely popular smartphone apps in the US.
Now it’s a question of finding someone with the will and the cash to acquire TikTok. McCourt said he’s working with Guggenheim Securities and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis to put together a group of investors who can swing the deal.
McCourt’s plan has won the support of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, who’s been working for years on a data privacy protocol called Solid. McCourt is also backed by Deb Schmill, founder of the Becca Schmill Foundation, a Needham nonprofit that combats the online exploitation of children, and psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose recent book “The Anxious Generation” argues that today’s social media services are harmful to children and teens.
Still, building an alternative system from scratch, and taking on the entrenched giants of social media, doesn’t seem very practical. But scooping up TikTok and its 170 million users could give Project Liberty the critical mass it needs to build a more privacy-friendly online ecosystem.
The US Congress opened the door last month. Motivated by fears that the Chinese government is using TikTok to spy on US users and spread pro-Chinese propaganda, lawmakers passed a bill to compel TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its operations in the US in 270 days., or cease distribution of TikTok’s hugely popular smartphone apps in the US.
McCourt built his fortune on a foundation of Boston real estate development deals, like the Union Wharf condos on Boston Harbor. In 2001, McCourt made an unsuccessful bid to purchase the Boston Red Sox. (Boston Globe owner John Henry and his partner Tom Werner would acquire the team the following year.)
McCourt instead acquired the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004, and relocated to the West Coast. His eight-year tenure with the team was marred by allegations of financial mismanagement, even as McCourt was entangled in an ugly divorce. The team filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011, yet McCourt was able to sell the Dodgers for $2 billion in 2012.
Throughout the crisis, McCourt was battered with hateful comments on Facebook, an experience that convinced him that social media companies had become too powerful. In 2021, he launched Project Liberty in a bid to redress the balance by creating new technology for handling personal data. It’s a hybrid organization — partly a non-profit think tank with input from Georgetown University, Stanford University, and Paris Institute of Political Studies, and partly a for-profit effort to build out privacy-protecting technologies for social media.
The heart of Project Liberty is what it calls the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol, or DSNP. It’s a set of standards for handling social media data, similar to the standards for email or web pages, and vastly different from the status quo. Social networks based on DSNP would not control the personal data of their users. Instead, users could decide how much or how little of their information to share. The social network would retain none of the data without a user’s explicit permission.
In such a system, users could easily switch from one social network to another without having to rebuild all their network relationships. If existing social media companies worked this way, you could switch from Elon Musk’s X to Mark Zuckerberg’s alternative service Threads whenever you liked, and bring all your followers with you, instead of having to build a separate roster for each service.
Project Liberty advisor David Clark, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, said DSNP could also let users fine-tune their social media services. For example, such a version of TikTok might let users choose from multiple video recommendation algorithms. An adult might see an edgier selection of videos, while providing a tamer version for her children. “It’s giving you more control over the quality of your experience,” said Clark.
But building a DSNP-based network appears nearly impossible. Facebook, X, and Google won’t dismantle their business models. And despite grumbles about lost privacy and fake news, users keep coming back for more. Alternative social networks have repeatedly fizzled out and so far, only MeWe, a social network with about 20 million subscribers, has committed to DSNP.
A sale of TikTok could be a game-changer, if McCourt and the investors he’s assembling can pull it off. There are still many uncertainties. TikTok has filed suit against the law that would force it to sell, saying it violates the First Amendment rights of its users. Some civil libertarians think this suit has a good chance of success.
But even if TikTok loses, the Chinese government has said that any buyer of the company will not be permitted to include TikTok’s powerful video recommendation software as part of the deal. This software is essential to TikTok’s vast popularity, and many potential bidders might not want the company without it.
McCourt’s whole plan is to transform the way TikTok works. “We don’t want the algorithm,” he said, “and that makes us a very interesting potential buyer.” Since TikTok would be worth far less without its algorithm, the McCourt consortium might pick it up on the cheap.
Even then, it’s an open question whether TikTok’s users would stick around as its new owners implement the new protocol. People often talk a good game about privacy but care far more about entertaining content and ease of use. Unless the new TikTok is at least as much fun as today’s version, there’s liable to be a great migration to copycat services like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
But McCourt is confident that social media users are getting fed up with intrusive ads and offensive content. A new version of TikTok based on a privacy-friendly protocol might be exactly what these users are waiting for.
“We’re seeing more and more people getting ready to leave,” McCourt said. “There has to be a place for them to go.”
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeTechLab.
