In a TikTok video posted on Wednesday, entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban said he is ready to fund TikTok alternatives based on the Bluesky AT protocol. In anticipation of an imminent U.S. ban on TikTok, which is set to take effect Sunday unless suspended by the Supreme Court, users have fled to other video platforms, including the Chinese app RedNote. But investors like Cuban see the potential for a more open social network, including an app ecosystem powered by the same technology that powers the Bluesky social network today.

AT Protocol is a newer open protocol designed for decentralized social media applications. It aims to address what some developers see as flaws in the existing decentralized protocol ActivityPub used by Mastodon and other social services. While Bluesky is currently AT Protocol's flagship application, there are now many other services being built using the technology.

Consumer demand for open social apps is also in full swing, with Bluesky itself seeing a surge in new sign-ups in the wake of the US presidential election, taking the network's user count to more than 27.6 million, up from just over 10 million in September. Meanwhile, on Wednesday we revealed news of the upcoming Bluesky client Flashes, which will focus on images rather than text.

Cuban said he would like to see and support products that compete with TikTok but are built on the AT protocol.

In the video, he briefly explains how ATProto (for short) allows people to create their own social network servers and applications.

He then added, “I am willing to invest in supporting anyone or anyone who creates a TikTok alternative based on the AT protocol. So if you have the skills, please let me know in the comments. If you create an MVP (minimum viable product), then I can see it, and that’s even better, because obviously, I think you’re going to get a lot of support,” Cuban said.

"More importantly, when you build on top of the AT protocol, it's scalable, so that means no one can buy it, no one can shut it down," the investor said of building an open social network Account portability aspects are noted.

That said, users who want to move their accounts to another server can do so without losing their followers, content, and other data.

In part, Cuban's interest in ATProto isn't just to expand the open social network; it's also to intensify competition with Elon Musk's X. Cuban has publicly feuded with Musk over X and elsewhere, criticizing X's practices in content moderation, misinformation and more.

Cuban asked interested developers to respond in the comments of the TikTok post.