A looming TikTok ban could affect the millions of small businesses that use the short-video social media app to help them grow their business.

Desiree Hill, owner of Crown’s Corner Mechanic in Conyers, Georgia, started her business solo as a mobile mechanic. Sharing videos of her work on TikTok helped spread the word and she became so popular she was able to open a 9,000 square foot brick and mortar shop with five employees 18 months ago.

“Every day I get at least two to three customers that have seen me on TikTok, watched my videos and wanted to become a customer,” she said.

Though TikTok has been around only since 2016, small business owners use the platform in a variety of ways, from growing a customer base to advertising and marketing, as well as selling goods directly from the site.

According to TikTok’s own estimates, small businesses on TikTok would lose more than $1 billion in revenue in a single month if the ban goes into effect.

The Justice Department ordered the app’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok or face a U.S. ban by Jan. 19, citing security concerns. The Supreme Court will take up the matter in January. President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, has asked the Supreme Court for a delay.

If a ban does occur, small businesses will have to migrate to other platforms to find their customers. Instagram Reels, SnapChat and YouTube Shorts are alternatives. The good news is brands likely already have a presence there. But it may be harder to reach teens that have made TikTok their preferred social media app.

Another alternative is to build a strong database of customers that opt in to providing contact emails or phone numbers. That lets owners reach out directly to customers with promotions and other marketing messages.

But Crown Corner Mechanic’s Hill said she is worried that other sites may not have the reach that TikTok does. She has a presence on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, but it’s not the same, she said.

“I am worried because there is no preparation for this,” she said. “It holds such a significant place in regards to my customer base and how I reach customers that if I lose TikTok, I will lose a large part of my business or I will lose my ability to grow anymore.”

Crystal Lister is the owner of Mommy and Me: The Listers, in Cypress, Texas, which offers interactive workshops about STEM education. She’s working on pivoting to YouTube for videos and Instagram Reels for teasers to direct people to YouTube, but said TikTok is easier.

“It is going to be a challenge if TikTok is banned because we’re losing kind of all the functionality you want — the ability for a video creation, the ability to spread the word via social media,” she said. “So we’ll have to use many other platforms to supplement what TikTok did in one.”

The founder and former CEO of the failed cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network could face decades in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday to federal fraud charges, admitting that he misled customers about the business.

Alexander Mashinsky, 58, of Manhattan, entered the plea in New York federal court to commodities and securities fraud.

He admitted illegally manipulating the price of Celsius’s proprietary crypto token while secretly selling his own tokens at inflated prices to pocket about $48 million before Celsius collapsed into bankruptcy in 2022.

In court, he admitted that in 2021 he publicly suggested there was regulatory consent for the company’s moves because he knew that customers “would find false comfort” with that.

And he said that in 2019, he was selling the crypto tokens even though he told the public that he was not. He said he knew customers would draw false comfort from that too.

“I accept full responsibility for my actions,” Mashinsky said of crimes that stretched from 2018 to 2022 as the company pitched itself to customers as a modern-day bank where they could safely deposit crypto assets and earn interest.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a release that Mashinsky “orchestrated one of the biggest frauds in the crypto industry” as his company’s assets purportedly grew to about $25 billion at its peak, making it one of the largest crypto platforms in the world.

He said Mashinsky used catchy slogans like “Unbank Yourself” to entice prospective customers with a pledge that their money would be as safe in crypto accounts as money would be in a bank. Meanwhile, prosecutors said, Mashinsky and co-conspirators used customer deposits to fund market purchases of the Celsius token to prop up its value.

Machinsky made tens of millions of dollars selling his own CEL tokens at artificially high prices, leaving his customers “holding the bag when the company went bankrupt,” Williams said.

An indictment alleged that Mashinsky promoted Celsius through media interviews, his social media accounts and Celsius’ website, along with a weekly “Ask Mashinsky Anything” session broadcast that was posted to Celsius’ website and a YouTube channel.

Celsius employees from multiple departments who noticed false and misleading statements in the sessions warned Mashinsky, but they were ignored, the indictment said.

A plea agreement Mashinsky made with prosecutors calls for him to be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison and to forfeit over $48 million, which is the amount of money he allegedly made by selling his company’s token.

Sentencing was scheduled for April 8.

Stubbornly high warranty expenses and lagging cost-cutting efforts are holding back Ford Motor Co.'s profits this year, causing the company to lower its full-year earnings guidance.

That pushed the company’s stock price down 6% in trading after Monday’s closing bell.

The Dearborn, Michigan, automaker, which reported third-quarter earnings Monday, said its net profit tumbled nearly 26% as it took $1 billion in accounting charges to write down assets for a canceled three-row electric SUV.

Ford said it made $892 million from July through September, compared with $1.2 billion it made a year earlier.

But excluding the one-time items, the company made an adjusted pretax profit of $2.6 billion, or 49 cents per share. That beat analyst estimates of 46 cents, according to FactSet.

Revenue rose 5.5% to $46.2 billion, also beating Wall Street predictions. Ford reduced its full-year pretax income guidance to $10 billion, at the low end of the $10 billion to $12 billion it expected at the end of the second quarter, spooking investors.

“Cost, especially warranty, has held back our earnings power, but as we bend that curve, there is significant financial upside for investors,” CEO Jim Farley told analysts on a conference call.

Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said warranty costs were slightly below the third quarter of last year, but still high. The company wouldn’t give numbers until it files its quarterly report with securities regulators on Tuesday but said costs will be higher than a year ago.

Ford reported $800 million of increased warranty costs for the second quarter of this year.

Farley has been trying to get a handle on warranty costs for the past four years. In October of 2020, he said the company was working to cut quality-related repairs after glitch-prone small-car transmissions hit the automaker’s bottom line.

Ford has said that it has a $7 billion cost gap with competitors, and Lawler said Monday it has made progress on that figure. The problem is competitors, which he did not identify, are cutting costs too. “We’ve taken cost out, but we’re not doing it at a pace faster than our competition,” he told analysts.

Ford has removed $2 billion in material, freight and labor costs this year, but that was offset by warranties and inflation at its Turkish joint venture, he said.
He said Ford is focused on reducing warranty and other costs, which will show up in later quarters.

The company’s plans are working, as evidenced by 10 straight quarters of revenue growth, Lawler said.

Farley said Ford has restructured its operations in Europe, South America, India and China, which collectively lost $2.2 billion in 2018 but together are profitable now. For instance, China, including exports, has contributed over $600 million to pretax earnings this year, Farley said.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Martin Shkreli, who was once dubbed “Pharma Bro” after jacking up the price of a lifesaving drug.

Shkreli appealed an order to return $64.6 million in profits he and his former company reaped after monopolizing the market for the medication and drastically increasing its price. His lawyers argued that the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is typical, and there were no noted dissents.

Prosecutors, though, said the company had agreed in a settlement to pay $40 million, and because Shkreli masterminded the scheme he should bear responsibility for repaying profits.

New York Attorney General Letitia James applauded the court’s action upholding the order, which also included a lifetime ban on Shkreli working in the pharmaceutical industry.

“This win reinforces how our state’s tough anti-fraud laws help protect New Yorkers and ensure bad actors cannot abuse their power, wealth, or influence,” she said in a statement.

Thomas Huff, a lawyer for Shkreli, said the decision was disappointing. But he also said the high court could yet overturn a lower court decision that made the $64 million penalty order possible even though Shkreli hadn’t personally gotten the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he said.

Shkreli was also ordered to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” the unreleased work that has been called the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group put a single copy of the album up for auction in 2015, on the condition that it not be put to commercial use.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and cheating them out of millions of dollars in two failed hedge funds he operated. Shkreli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals — later Vyera — when it raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after obtaining exclusive rights to the decades-old drug in 2015. It treats a rare parasitic disease that strikes pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients.

He defended the decision as capitalism at work, saying insurance and other programs ensured that people who need Daraprim would ultimately get it. But the move sparked outrage, from the medical community to Congress.

Shkreli was released from prison in 2022 after serving much of a seven-year sentence.

In the high-stakes showdown between the world’s richest man and a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, Elon Musk blinked.

Musk’s social media site X has complied with Alexandre de Moraes’ orders and requested its service be reestablished in the country, two sources said Thursday.

X complied with orders to block certain accounts from the platform, name an official legal representative in Brazil, and pay fines imposed for not complying with earlier court orders, his lawyers said in a petition filed Thursday, according to the sources, who are familiar with the document. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

On Saturday, de Moraes ordered the platform to submit additional documentation about its legal representative for court review, which the sources said has been done.

X was blocked on Aug. 30 in the highly online country of 213 million people, where it was one of X’s biggest markets, with more than 20 million users. De Moraes ordered the shutdown after sparring with Musk for months over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. The company said at the time that de Moraes’ efforts to block certain accounts were illegal moves to censor “political opponents” and that it would not comply. Musk called the judge an enemy of free speech and a criminal. But de Moraes’ decisions have been repeatedly upheld by his peers — including his nationwide block of X.

In a twist, X’s new representative is the same person who held the position before X shuttered its office in Brazil, according to the company’s public filing with the Sao Paulo commercial registry. That happened after de Moraes threatened to arrest the person, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição, if X did not comply with orders to block accounts.

In an apparent effort to avoid her getting blamed for potential violations of Brazilian law — and risk arrest — a clause has been written into the representation agreement that any action on the part of X that will result in obligations for her requires prior instruction in writing from the company, according to the company’s filing at the registry.

It’s still early to know whether the feud between X and Brazil’s top court is over, said ⁠Bruna Santos, a lawyer and global campaigns manager at nonprofit Digital Action. However, the platform’s decision to appoint a representative indicates the company has entered “a state of good-faith cooperation with Brazilian authorities.”

And the fact that Brazilian users migrated in droves to rival platforms BlueSky and Threads may have played into X’s backstep, Santos added.

One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.

The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.

The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends in court papers.

They allege that Google also controls the ad exchange market, which matches the buy side to the sell side.

“It’s worth saying the quiet part out loud,” Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement. “One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here.”

Google says the government’s case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock to reach audiences.

In her opening statement, Google lawyer Karen Dunn likened the government’s case to a “time capsule with with a Blackberry, an iPod and a Blockbuster video card.”

Dunn said Supreme Court precedents warn judges about “the serious risk of error or unintended consequences” when dealing with rapidly emerging technology and considering whether antitrust law requires intervention. She also warned that any action taken against Google won’t benefit small businesses but will simply allow other tech behemoths like Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok to fill the void.

According to Google’s annual reports, revenue has actually declined in recent years for Google Networks, the division of the Mountain View, California-based tech giant that includes such services as AdSense and Google Ad Manager that are at the heart of the case, from $31.7 billion in 2021 to $31.3 billion in 2023,

The trial that began Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, over the alleged ad tech monopoly was initially going to be a jury trial, but Google maneuvered to force a bench trial, writing a check to the federal government for more than $2 million to moot the only claim brought by the government that required a jury.

The case will now be decided by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton and is best known for high-profile terrorism trials including that of Sept. 11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui. Brinkema, though, also has experience with highly technical civil trials, working in a courthouse that sees an outsize number of patent infringement cases.

The Virginia case comes on the heels of a major defeat for Google over its search engine, which generates the majority of the company’s $307 billion in annual revenue. A judge in the District of Columbia declared the search engine a monopoly, maintained in part by tens of billions of dollars Google pays each year to companies like Apple to lock in Google as the default search engine presented to consumers when they buy iPhones and other gadgets.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday kept on hold the latest multibillion-dollar plan from the Biden administration that would have lowered payments for millions of borrowers, while lawsuits make their way through lower courts.

The justices rejected an administration request to put most of it back into effect. It was blocked by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In an unsigned order, the court said it expects the appeals court to issue a fuller decision on the plan “with appropriate dispatch.”

The Education Department is seeking to provide a faster path to loan cancellation, and reduce monthly income-based repayments from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. The plan also wouldn’t require borrowers to make payments if they earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line — $32,800 a year for a single person.

Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rejected an earlier plan that would have wiped away more than $400 billion in student loan debt.

Cost estimates of the new SAVE plan vary. The Republican-led states challenging the plan peg the cost at $475 billion over 10 years. The administration cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $276 billion.

Two separate legal challenges to the SAVE plan have been making their way through federal courts. In June, judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that blocked much of the administration’s plan. Debt that already had been forgiven under the plan was unaffected.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with a provision allowing for lower monthly payments. Republican-led states had asked the high court to undo that ruling.

But after the 8th Circuit blocked the entire plan, the states had no need for the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices noted in a separate order issued Wednesday.

The Justice Department had suggested the Supreme Court could take up the legal fight over the new plan now, as it did with the earlier debt forgiveness plan. But the justices declined to do so.

“This is a recipe for chaos across the student loan system,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group.

“No court has decided on the merits here, but despite all of that borrowers are left in this limbo state where their rights don’t exist for them,” Pierce said.

Eight million people were already enrolled in the SAVE program when it was paused by the lower court, and more than 10 million more people are looking for ways to afford monthly payments, he said.

Sheng Li, litigation counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a legal group funded by conservative donors, applauded the order. “There was no basis to lift the injunction because the Department of Education’s newest loan-cancellation program is just as unlawful as the one the Court struck down a year ago,” he said in a statement.