Well, I think it’s fairly easy, because, first of all, I don’t think there are a lot of buyers for the platform without the algorithm. We don’t want the algorithm. We don’t need it. Coincidentally, we’ve been building a clean stack from the bottom up for five years now. We’re a viable buyer. We meet the terms.
So I think the most powerful argument we have is that they can comply with US law, and they could get value for their assets. We think it would be a sensible way for everybody to resolve this on an upbeat note and make it a win-win. China and ByteDance get some value for the US platform; the US citizens are protected; Congress is happy and the president is happy. And most importantly, TikTok users and influencers are happy because the platform stays up and running.
When you say you have built a tech stack for TikTok, do you mean the decentralized social network protocol or DSNP?
It starts with DSNP, but then we built a platform layer called Frequency, which is the way to implement DSNP. Now we’re onboarding apps on Frequency. We have [social media platform] MeWe up and running, and now it has nearly 1.5 million users. We have four more apps not including TikTok joining.
So we’re ready. We just need scale. A million and a half [users] is awesome as a proof of concept, but it’s not the scale required to have an alternative upgraded internet where people could choose between [it and] the current internet.
What we’re proposing is there’ll be an alternative where [users] are not surveilled, the data isn’t scraped, and they permit the use of their data. Individuals get value for it, and agency is returned to individuals. And very importantly, they own their relationships. Right now, the TikTok user base—the influencers and creators—do not own the communities they create.
When you say users can get compensated for their data, how much are we talking about? $5, $500, or more? What would the payment system look like?
I think it’s a whole new economy that’s going to evolve. Last time I checked, the “Magnificent Seven” [Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla] are worth something like $18 trillion. That’s bigger than most countries’ GDP by far. So nobody can argue any longer that the data is invaluable, right? As far as TikTok specifically is concerned, we call it the “people’s bid” because I’d love to see the user base be able to own a piece of it.
Who is going to be the one paying? Will it be your platform paying users, or will advertisers pay users to acquire their social graph?
I think there’ll be advertising for sure. I mean, people, in America in particular, like to buy things. They like to have a choice. They like to have whatever they buy delivered up to their home the next day. We have the privilege of all that. So we want to continue to cater to that, and really celebrate that. But not in the way it’s currently done.
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