Potential TikTok sale a hot topic at SXSW

Discussion of the potential forced sale of TikTok in the US has been a hot topic at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference this week.

Overnight entrepreneur and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary announced his support for Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty bid for TikTok. According to reports, McCourt is one of four bidders looking to buy the Chinese-owned short form video app.

Go Deeper: If successful in buying TikTok, McCourt is expected to change some of the data practices and potentially shift away from a walled garden model.

“Right now, we are accustomed to top-down, black box algorithms. In the future, we’ll all have our own algorithm that we’ll curate to operate like we want it to. We’ll be able to have the ability to curate our experience on the internet — to be entertained, to buy things, newsfeeds, etc.,” McCourt said, reports The Current. “It’s just a fundamentally better experience when you’re in charge, as opposed to being the product.”

A Creator View: The Information reports some TikTok creators are preparing contingencies - just in case - as the deadline for TikTok to separate its US operations from China’s ByteDance approaches.

Kaya Yurieff describes talking to creators at the conference who have been building up their followings on Instagram Reels "as a way to hedge against a potential ban".

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