Tim Stokely, the founder of adult content OnlyFans, reportedly submitted a proposal to the White House to buy TikTok’s US operations at the 11th hour. This makes it the second company to make such a bid, with Amazon being the first.
The bid was made through Zoop, a social media startup that is cofounded by Stokely and RJ Philips, and The HBar Foundation, a cryptocurrency outfit. The OnlyFans founder says that this “represents a David vs. Goliath moment against traditional social media giants by endorsing a creator-first revolution.”
“Our bid for TikTok isn’t just about changing ownership, it’s about creating a new paradigm where both creators and their communities benefit directly from the value they generate,” Phillips also said in a statement to Reuters.
The deadline for TikTok’s ban is closing in, with the current Trump administration set to decide the fate of ByteDance’s US side of the operations on 5 March (6 March for us). The deadline stems from the relief that the White House instated, after the original ban that was supposed to go into effect on 19 January.
President Trump is expected to decide the fate of the app, and the 170 million Americans who use it. ByteDance has argued that the ban is a violation of its First Amendment right of the US Constitution, which the right to freedom of speech.
At the time of writing, OnlyFan founder Stokely declined to provide further details.
