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Friday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law banning TikTok that is set to go into effect in America on Sunday. But fret not, you millions of TikTok users, Mark Cuban wants to come to your rescue.
Barring some unexpected political movement, TikTok will be completely shut down on Sunday. (What that means here.) However, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance can sell the app to someone which the government approves, it can return. Both Elon Musk and Mr. Beast have expressed interest in possibly doing just that.
Mark Cuban, on the other hand, says he would be open to funding a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky’s AT Protocol. Bluesky (follow BroBible here) is already seeing its AT Protocol being used to create a new photo and video app as an alternative to Instagram called Flashes.
“There’s an app called Bluesky and it’s built on the AT Protocol,” Cuban said in a TikTok video. “I would be open to investing in supporting anybody — or somebody who creates a TikTok replacement built on the AT Protocol. So if you’ve got that ability, let me know in the comments.
“If you create an MVP — a minimum viable product — so I can see it, that’s all the better, because obviously, I think you’d have a whole lot of support. And more importantly, when you build on the AT Protocol, it’s extensible, so that means nobody can just buy it, nobody can just close it.”
@mcuban Let me know in the comments ! https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/atproto. #savetiktok #tiktok## shout out to @Austin ♬ original sound – Mark Cuban
Bluesky currently has around 27.6 million active users. Around 17.6 million those users have joined the app since September. So there is obviously a growing sentiment that people are looking for social media alternatives.
Thousands of TikTok users have been flocking to Lemon8 and RedNote. However, RedNote’s default language is Mandarin (yes, it, like TikTok is from China), so those users are have been signing up for Duolingo to better understand the app.
So, if Mark Cuban can find someone to build a TikTok alternative using Bluesky’s AT Protocol, which really shouldn’t be that hard to do, then all of those former TikTok users can go back to using a video-sharing app based on English. Which, in turn, should be a potential big-time money maker.