Frank McCourt, the billionaire bidding to buy U.S. part of TikTok, wants users to control their data

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In a conversation Thursday with Texas Tribune CEO Sonal Shah, billionaire and longtime tech critic Frank McCourt discussed his pursuit of a better internet where each person retains ownership over their own data, not conglomerates that collect and sell user information for profit.

“Rather than, you know, thinking of data as an abstract, kind of amorphous, unimportant thing, let’s start thinking about it as our personhood, everything about us,” McCourt said. “It is you that is being taken from you and exploited. Don’t you want to own you? We shouldn’t be giving that up just to use the internet.”

The business executive’s mission led him to announce a bid in May to purchase the U.S. portion of TikTok, the social media app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. While other potential buyers might be more intrigued by TikTok’s lucrative algorithm, McCourt’s primary interest lies in the app’s user base of around 170 million Americans, or half the country’s population.

If he’s successful, McCourt said he hopes to restructure TikTok’s underlying programming so that its massive user base controls what personal information they share with the app and how it’s used. He argued that the vast amount of data points collected from internet usage enables social media companies to predict behavior and create addictive products, especially for youth.

In April, Congress and President Joe Biden approved a law that instructs ByteDance to either sell TikTok to an approved buyer within 270 days or face a ban in the United States. The legislation emerged out of national security concerns from lawmakers about the Chinese government’s influence over the app’s content and access to its data.

TikTok sued the federal government, claiming that the law is unconstitutional and infringes on Americans’ First Amendment right to free speech. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has scheduled the trial’s oral arguments to start in September.

Describing the current internet as surveillance-based and predatory, McCourt connected the future of digital data ownership with the fate of U.S. democracy.

“One of the two is going to have to give,” he said. “Either our political system is going to become more autocratic, or the tech has to become more democratic.”