On Saturday night a party was raging at a dive bar in East Austin co-hosted by Project Liberty, an organization founded by billionaire Frank McCourt whose aim is to change the internet by giving users control over their data. In early March it was announced that Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, was joining the bid.
The room was packed with GenZ-ers dancing to hits from the ‘80s and ‘90s while snacking on chips dipped in hot sauce and topped with caviar.
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The atmosphere was light and fun, but that didn’t stop partygoers from asking the serious, wonky question on most people’s mind: What in the world is happening with TikTok?
On January 17 the US Supreme Court (in a rare unanimous decision) upheld the TikTok ban passed by Congress that requires the now Chinese-owned app to be sold to a new owner or be banned in the United States. The judges reasoned that the security risks posed by TikTok having a Chinese owner (ByteDance) outweighed any First Amendment concerns.
The app was then banned for 14 hours before Donald Trump signed an executive order (hours after being sworn in as president) giving ByteDance until April 5 to sell its U.S. holdings. A few days ago Trump hinted that he might extend the deadline even further.
Since then the only group that has submitted a legal, formal bid to buy TikTok is Project Liberty.
At the party on Saturday, McCourt’s team explained there are a few possible scenarios.
First, there is a chance that Trump keeps extending the deadline for TikTok’s sale. If the sale does not occur that would be illegal, and it could be up to the Supreme Court again to figure out how it will uphold its decision.
Two, if Trump does not keep extending the deadline, a sale must occur. Then it would be up to ByteDance to decide if it wants to do so or cease operations in the United States, cutting off TikTok’s 170 American million users from the app. “Which is really the big question right now,” said McCourt at a SXSW panel on Friday. “Is ByteDance going to sell us Tik Tok?”
The third scenario is that Trump sets a sale deadline and ByteDance agrees to sell. The Project Liberty team feels strongly the app would then go to them since they are the only ones who have submitted a bid for it. “It was the only offer submitted to the Department of Justice during the last administration, during the so-called 270 days, which was the original time frame for people to come forward and make an offer,” explained McCourt. “We met all the conditions.”
The organization puts its chances of acquiring the app at a 50/50 split.
Until more is known, however, the future of TikTok will remain an intense topic of speculation. McCourt, for one, gets directly asked about it two or three times a day. Minimum.
