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Is the TikTok ban a chance to rethink the whole internet?

The billionaire Frank McCourt is launching a “people’s bid” to buy the app, replace its addictive algorithm, and give users greater control of their data. Is it a publicity stunt or a sincere attempt to reform the digital age?

Most notably, in 2021, he created Project Liberty, a five-hundred-million-dollar initiative to fund academic research, develop new technologies, and connect those “committed to a people-powered Internet.” Its biggest release thus far is a protocol—the rules that devices use to communicate with one another—which is freely available and which promises to give users more autonomy over their online identities and experiences. Last spring, while McCourt was promoting his book, “ Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age,” in which he writes that big tech companies have “learned how to tap into our most basic instincts” and “exert untold influence over us,” President Joe Biden signed a bill that would ban TikTok, the famously addictive app with more than a billion active users worldwide, or force a sale of its U.S. operations to an American buyer by January 19th. “Imagine a singular online identity that belongs to you, one where you control how other companies interact with your data, where you own your connections and content across applications,” a voice-over intoned, showing a woman posting about her trip to Miami on two separate social-media platforms.

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