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Just 10 days before the US TikTok ban goes into effect, businessman Frank McCourt's internet advocacy nonprofit Freedom Project announced on Thursday that it has submitted a proposal to buy the social networking site from Chinese technology company ByteDance.
Project Liberty and its partners, known as “The People's Bid for TikTok,” would restructure the app to exist on an American-owned platform and prioritize users' digital security, the project said statement.
“We sent ByteDance a proposal to realize Project Liberty's vision for a new TikTok – built on an American technology stack that puts people first,” McCourt, founder of Project Liberty, said in a statement. “By keeping the platform alive without relying on TikTok's current algorithm and avoiding a ban, millions of Americans will be able to continue using the platform.”
A Project Liberty spokesman said the nonprofit did not disclose financial terms of the offer, but confirmed that ByteDance had received the proposal.
CNBC has reached out to TikTok for comment.
The Supreme Court will do it listen to oral arguments regarding the ban, which President Joe Biden signed on Friday. ByteDance has repeatedly refused to sell TikTok and has appealed the regulations on First Amendment grounds.
The case worked its way through the court system. Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of the law on December 6, writing that the government's national security justification for the ban was sufficiently compelling.
On December 9 submission to courtTikTok said the ban would cost small U.S. businesses and social media creators $1.3 billion in revenue and earnings in just one month, and that more than 7 million U.S. users do business on TikTok.
The ban, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary-Controlled Apps Act, prohibits the distribution and maintenance of the app when it is owned by China.
The goal of the People's Bid for TikTok initiative is to migrate TikTok to an open-source platform that gives users more control over their data, as part of Project Liberty's mission to build an Internet with more user empowerment.
The initiative cooperates with the investment banking group Guggenheim Securities and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. His supporters include digital security advocates, investor Kevin O'Leary and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.