On Wednesday, the worst fears of TikTok addicts were realized when the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would ban the distribution of TikTok in the U.S. if ByteDance does not sell its shares to someone else.  If this bill becomes law, it is not certain that there is a U.S. buyer that would be willing to purchase those shares, and it is not certain that the Chinese government would be willing to allow ByteDance to sell those shares.  So the fate of the platform is very much up in the air.  170 million Americans have accounts on TikTok, and 7 million small businesses use the platform.  Needless to say, there are vast hordes of young people that are extremely upset about what Congress is trying to do, and lots of them will be voting in November.

It was apparent that this bill had a tremendous amount of support, but I was surprised that so many lawmakers from both parties ended up voting for it…

The House on Wednesday passed legislation that could ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance doesn't sell its stake in the massively popular social media platform.

The vote was 352 in favor and 65 opposed, underscoring its broad bipartisan support, with 197 Republicans and 155 Democrats voting to approve it. Fifteen Republicans and 50 Democrats voted against the bill. One Democrat voted "present."