- Project Liberty, one of the principal bidders for TikTok, said a $600 million EU fine on the platform was further evidence of social media’s poor track record of protecting user data. Led by Frank McCourt, Project Liberty has long been an advocate of reforming how social media companies gather data on users.
Project Liberty, the consortium of investors led by billionaire Frank McCourt that is bidding for TikTok, said the platform’s recent $600 million fine for violating EU privacy laws was further evidence of social media’s harmful data collection practices.
“This is the latest story in the avalanche of evidence showing that individuals—not Big Tech platforms—should control their own data,” Project Liberty President Tomicah Tilleman told Fortune in an exclusive statement.
Project Liberty and McCourt first announced their bid for TikTok in January ahead of a deadline that would have forced the platform to be sold to an American owner. President Donald Trump eventually extended that deadline, but McCourt’s bid and the data security issues surrounding TikTok remain.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court upheld a law forcing TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations to an American company. The law passed because of concerns the Chinese government might have access to U.S. user data, potentially representing a national security threat.
On Friday, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which regulates TikTok because its European headquarters is in Ireland, fined the company $600 million for failing to protect the personal data of EU users from being accessed by Chinese authorities. TikTok allegedly violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU’s strict data privacy law that limits how large platforms can share and store user information.
TikTok said it will appeal the charges and denied violating the EU’s law. TikTok “has never received a request for European user data from the Chinese authorities, and has never provided European user data to them,” the company said in a statement. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment about Project Liberty’s statement made outside of working hours in Europe.
Tilleman sees European and U.S. TikTok users facing similar threats to their personal data.
“Americans and Europeans both deserve digital platforms that are committed to protecting privacy, upholding national security, and putting people first,” he said.
Project Liberty and McCourt have long advocated for reforming the internet and specifically social media companies writ large so that collecting user data is no longer the norm. Instead, the group, which dubbed its bid “The People’s Bid,” believes that users should opt in to which data they would like to share with social media platforms.
The current version of social media allows companies to collect reams of data about users, which then gets used for targeted advertisements. Project Liberty sees acquiring TikTok and its roughly 170 million U.S. as a means to jumpstart its new vision of the internet.
“The People’s Bid for TikTok is the best way to complete a sale and transition the platform to an American-made tech stack that gives people control of their online experience,” Tilleman said.
So far, Project Liberty’s bid includes support from several well-known investors. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian joined the group in March, and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary was one of the original investors.
Trump has twice extended the deadline for a TikTok sale since its original January deadline passed. The current deadline is now in mid-June. However, any forced sale, which the Chinese government opposes, could now possibly be tied up in a broader trade agreement between the U.S. and China.
