Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon exposes the politics of a group trying to take over a major social media platform.
A Biden megadonor, a board member of George Soros’s foundation, and a former aide to Bill Clinton are seeking to buy TikTok as part of a “visionary initiative to transform how the Internet works.”
Project Liberty, a “global alliance for responsible technology” founded by billionaire former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, announced last week that it is working to assemble a group of investors to buy the social media platform from its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
“Project Liberty is organizing a bid to acquire the popular social media platform TikTok in the U.S., with the goal of placing people and data empowerment at the center of the platform’s design and purpose,” the group announced on its website.
But conservative free speech advocates are raising concerns about Project Liberty’s board, which is stacked with left-wing activists, and with McCourt’s history of bankrolling Democratic politicians.
“Every prominent Democrat not named Ro Khanna has now bought into the belief that government and big tech should censor their political opponents,” said Daniel Schneider, the vice president of the Media Research Center’s Free Speech America project.
“[When] you see this horde of Democrats trying to buy TikTok, it’s clear they have the same motivation as George Soros does in buying hundreds of radio stations. They are trying to control information flow to manipulate people and how they vote.”
Project Liberty’s bid could reignite debate over political bias and social media companies. In 2020, Twitter and other platforms were accused of misusing anti-disinformation and anti-hate speech policies to ban conservatives and censor journalism that was unfavorable to Joe Biden’s presidential bid.
Democrats view TikTok as a powerful tool to reach younger voters in their base. The platform—which is used by 60 percent of U.S. adults under the age of 30—is so valuable for political messaging that the Biden campaign and other Democratic politicians have continued to use it despite the controversy over TikTok’s links to the Chinese government.
