Billionaire Frank McCourt's TikTok bid wins key backer as he looks past app's prized algorithm

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Frank McCourt, civic entrepreneur, executive chairman of McCourt Global and founder of Project Liberty, speaks at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival in New York City on May 22, 2024. In the race to buy TikTok, billionaire Frank McCourt is pitching investors with a chance to create a new platform that gives users the ability to control their own data. "I don't want to own TikTok," he told reporters Thursday. "I don't want to be the CEO of a social media platform. I want a new internet. A new improved alternative to what we have." McCourt's move comes at a time when concerns about data privacy and child safety online have led to dozens of bills at the state level, and a bipartisan push to move federal legislation. His pitch has drawn a key group: Parents whose children died after being influenced by social media or bullied on various platforms. "Once Frank's built the infrastructure and the public finds out that there's a safer way to go, a more profitable way to go, then the people will start coming," said Sam Chapman, who said his son Sammy died from a fentanyl overdose after buying drugs on Snapchat . Chapman said McCourt's vision would appeal to "hundreds of thousands of parents" who are seeking a safer internet for their kids. As a business executive and philanthropist, McCourt spent years advocating for a new internet in which a user's data is owed by the user. He founded Project Liberty to build a healthier version of social media. Project Liberty is working with Guggenheim Securities and law firm Kirkland & Ellis to buy the viral video platform. McCourt said he has also been approached by a wide-ranging group of potential investors including pension funds, philanthropies, academics and private investors.