Op TikTok kan je binnenkort ook in Nederland met één druk op de knop producten kopen, dankzij de nieuwe TikTok Shop-functie. Dat zou het leven makkelijker moeten maken, maar er kleven ook risico’s aan, en de leeftijd van gebruikers wordt niet goed gecontroleerd.
Andy Burnham‘s busy soundtracking campaign videos with Elbow and Oasis, and declaring himself “the end of neoliberalism.” But one intrepid investigator, Zöe Bread, suggests otherwise. Zoë Bread is Manchester’s favourite Zoë Bread is a TikTok superstar sleuth with 1.5 million-followers and an impressive citizen journalist. She’s renowned for her engaging video investigations and antics, filmed wearing a bread mask. (See the Mill‘s profile.) Zöe Bread – via the BBC She’s spent the last year or so methodically dismantling Manchester City Council (MCC)’s credibility, one Freedom of Information request or dogged phone call at a time. Her persistent investigation even forced MCC to refund a load of parking ticket fines issued despite “confusing” parking payment signs. Since a parking fine on Collier Street sent her down that rabbit hole, Zöe Bread has gone from fighting misleading road signs to investigating the financing of Manchester’s biggest developments. Online, people even hail her as the only journalist Manchester has left. (This humble reporter begs to differ.) In particular, she’s turned her lens on the architecture of Burnham’s ‘Manchesterism’. What she uncovered looks less like “the end of neoliberalism” and more like plain old neoliberalism, only with better PR. All eyes on Andy Burnham Last week, Burnham released his official campaign video for the Makerfield by-election. In it, he wanders the red brick streets of Ashton-in-Makerfield, invoking the damage done by Thatcher’s government to places like this. He positions himself and his Northern-tinged philosophy as the antidote: “Manchesterism is the end of neoliberalism.” This was, by any measure, a polished piece of political communication. Oasis on the soundtrack. Elbow. The “only man” who knows exactly which emotional buttons to press in a post-industrial constituency that Labour needs to hold against Reform. The problem — and Zoë Bread is not the first to notice this, but she may be the most effective at explaining it — is that the record doesn’t match the rhetoric. “Manchesterism is the end of neoliberalism” — Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) May 18, 2026 For a deep, measured look at Burnham’s actual record and insight into his inner circle, I’d recommend Mill editor Joshi Hermann’s recent piece on Burnhamism. What does ‘Manchesterism’ really stand for? Zoë Bread’s investigation into property development company Renaker and its boss’ links with Burnham is a stellar case in point. Bread picks apart the housing reality beneath Burnham’s mayoral tenure. Those investigations repeatedly surfaced the façade of ‘Burnhamism’, ‘Manchesterism’ or whatever you call ‘it’. This is familiar territory for Zöe Bread, and important now — for us all. Yes, Burnham brought the ‘Bee’ bus network back under public control in Greater Manchester. But it was actually set in motion before he took office, despite him claiming credit, ‘Boris Bike‘-like. Really, the Thatcherite wholesaling of public buses should never have occurred. Yes, Burnham stood up, vocally at least, for the North during Covid. But he also oversaw £400,000 in Covid-era Arts Council funding funnelled to his pal Sacha Lord for negligible public benefit. Bread-related, he’s also allowed tax-exile developers to build skyscrapers with zero affordable housing. The great housing heist The GMCA’s housing investment loans fund, it turns out, isn’t creating much affordable housing. That’s despite the fund’s stated intentionto do so. This is precisely the problem. The GMCA creates loopholes for developers to make millions with little or no benefit to most taxpayers lending them that money. Mainly to one company: Renaker. The Mill reported earlier this year that one prominent developer, Daren Whitaker, funded virtually all of his developments with nearly £700 million in loans from the GMCA’s housing fund. Meanwhile, he took £40 million in private dividends from projects backed by those loans over two years. Whitaker became one of the UK’s wealthiest men off of taxpayers’ money. Then, as Zöe Bread reported, he liquidated one of many companies, took out over £345 million in loans and moved to tax exile in Monaco (briefly). Renaker made no affordable housing, and Burnham chairs the GMCA fund. The GMCA’s planning committee eventually rejected one of Whitaker’s schemes, unanimously, with one councillor stating bluntly: We should not be seeing fancy yoga rooms. We should be seeing affordable housing. The theory doing the rounds online, the Mill noted with some delight, was simply: Zoë Bread strikes again. The Renaker-made ‘Manc-hattan’ via MEVA ‘Manchesterism’ and its contradictions Into this context drop countless write-ups of Burnham’s ‘Manchesterism vision’. Much of the UK’s left and centre-spectrum, from Novara to the New Statesman, is seemingly embracing Burnhamism. But why? Burnham says he would still obey Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules. That means accepting the same Treasury constraints that have blocked serious public investment for decades. Can you really challenge neoliberalism while simultaneously reassuring bond markets, protecting fiscal rules, and refusing to confront financiers? Burnham’s own description of Manchesterism is as “neither Blue Labour nor soft left, Blairite nor Brownite, but a form of consensual, business-friendly socialism”. Market socialism is perfectly viable, but those two words sit uncomfortably next to each other here. Does Burnham really mean taxpayer-funded socialism for Renaker types but market misery for the rest of us? We’re hearing calls for “change“, yet again, less than two years after that vacuous, any-and-all message got us into this very mess. That, and “For Us“. But for who, exactly? Daren Whitaker? Sacha Lord? Labour Together cronies like Josh Simons? Few are pausing to ask whether Burnham’s mayoral record actually bears out the egalitarian framings. ‘Manchesterism’ is just neoliberalism Few interrogate the substance of ‘Manchesterism’ at any meaningful depth. They’re treating the phrase as a coherent ideology, rather than just political branding. The developer dividend scandals Zoë Bread excavated are not peripheral to Manchesterism. They are a core feature of it. Public investment funds flowing into private hands, with luxury towers rising where affordable housing was promised, is not a glitch. It’s the pattern of neoliberalism all over. ‘Manchesterism’ is the archetypal neoliberal model, as GMTU tenant organiser and author Isaac Rose writes in The Rentier City: Manchester and the Making of the Neoliberal Metropolis. Rose stresses the role of Renaker-style public-private partnerships over decades in Labour-controlled Manchester city centre. Burnham barely even provides a more rhetorically progressive version of these tired arrangements. They’ve defined British and especially Mancunian urban governance for forty years. The public provides the risk capital; the private sector captures the returns. Why does this matter beyond Makerfield? The Makerfield by-election is not simply Labour internal drama, though that’s considerable too. Burnham is running on an explicitly anti-Starmer platform, hoping to soon become prime minister. Starmer’s allies describe the vote as “unnecessary“, while many others declare it the “most consequential” of our history. Across the spectrum they’re right — it’s very consequential. What’s needed, in such consequential times, is asking qui bono — who exactly benefits — from the economic model being sold as liberation from neoliberalism? Really, it looks like more of the same. Zoë Bread doesn’t have a press pass. But she has 1.5 million people watching her read out GMCA loan fund documents in a car park. That, right now, seems the most important public service. Featured image via the BBC By Cameron Baillie From Canary via This RSS Feed.
The fitness influencer from Preston is a proud northerner who wants to put Preston on the map.
I keep mine zipped up in a case attached to my backpack with a carabiner - and I still do this! (TikTok screencap)
The first time I heard a song by Saint Levant, only three years ago, was in a world that does not exist any more. Gaza’s buildings were intact, as were its schools and roads and markets and mosques. My home city of Khartoum in Sudan was standing, as it had for centuries. Back then, I could scroll for fun, not in dread. I could stumble, say, in late 2022, upon an arresting clip on TikTok of a song by an Arab artist with a pun for a name; Saint Levant, a play on Saint Laurent – the icon of western style had been Arabised in homage to the Middle East’s Levant region. I began to see the same song all over my social media. In the video, Saint Levant, then 22, is in a white vest and brown trousers. A gold pendant chain dangles on his chest, a tattoo encircles his left arm. He starts by rapping in English, telling the woman he is wooing that “he’s not toxic, he’s broken baby”. And then, the twist, as he switches to Arabic, then French, then English again. Like a wholesome boy next door, he tells her to send his regards to her grandmother and her brother. Then says that he wants to make her forget about her ex, he wants her overthinking all her texts, he wants the neighbours to hear her yell. “Lover boy Levant is back in the building,” he declared. What we had here, was a certified fuckboy. Someone in the chaste Arabic music scene talking publicly about sex and dating, rather than the usual coy flirtation or yearning. Within weeks, the song, Very Few Friends, had racked up millions of listens. But still, Saint Levant remained an enigma. From the lyrics, it was hard to place where he came from. I assumed he was Lebanese, the spiritual home of the Arabic Francophone lover boy. Then I discovered that he is Palestinian. This made him even more of a curio in the mainstream Middle Eastern pop scene, one dominated by Egypt and Lebanon. In March 2023, an album arrived, From Gaza, With Love. It established Saint Levant’s roots, but remained in the trilingual chat-up pop genre. It was largely unremarkable, and I filed Saint Levant away in my mind as a one-hit wonder. Then in April 2023, war erupted in Sudan, and death, fear and escape from bullets and bombs was visited on home and family. I forgot about Saint Levant, as I forgot about all music, all art, all entertainment. Six months after the start of the war in Sudan came 7 October, and another war gathered an unstoppable momentum.
My understanding was rap song (possibly a reference to violence) -> used in TikToks especially basketball -> said by a kid at a basketball game while doing an excited hand gesture -> went viral from that and now kids just shout out for funsies, because kids do silly things.
In a separate post, a male user expressed frustration after RedNote censored a photo of his upper body. “Why can’t I post photos of my fitness and abs?” he asked, adding he had “never had such a problem on TikTok and Instagram.” A Chinese user suggested that he try covering his nipples, as Chinese social media platforms generally impose restrictions on displaying them when it is perceived as sexually suggestive. Oof ouch my male privilege
Elon Musk wants a SpaceX IPO valuing the company at upwards of $1.75 trillion. To get there, he got the rules changed so that index funds, with millions of Americans’ retirement savings, are forced to buy in. Retirees could take huge losses, while insiders cash out. More Perfect Union is an Emmy-winning, nonprofit newsroom whose mission is to build power for working people. Here’s what that means: We report on the real struggles and challenges of the working class from a working-class perspective. We attempt to connect those problems to potential solutions. We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power. And we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems. To support our independent journalism, subscribe, donate, and follow our other pages through the links below: Help fund our reporting: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mpu-splash Substack: https://substack.perfectunion.us/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moreperfectunion Twitter: https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/moreperfectunion.bsky.social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MorePerfectUS Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perfectunion/ Threads: https://www.threads.net/@perfectunion Website: https://www.perfectunion.us/ From More Perfect Union via This RSS Feed.
So here’s what we do: we start a TikTok challenge. “Nickname November” or something like that, where you use a different name every day of the month for maximum confusion. Get a couple classes doing it, especially if there are any trans kids in the school, and you can see how far you can stress the system. For the schools that require physical signatures, that’ll piss people off right quick. For the ones that just use an automated email and call it a day, toss in a twist: have each student loudly announce their new name at the start of every class, AA style. Heck, get the school announcer in on it. “Chess club on Wednesday has been cancelled, and Squidward Jones is now going by Jackie McJackson Johnstone.” They want a ridiculous law to be followed? Okay, here you go.
I’ve seen her videos/TikToks and she also hangs around with teens or people in their early 20’s too. It’s all over the snark groups on her with people being creeped out by it.
Weird that the Libs of Tiktok account is able to post names and locations pretty freely… I wonder what the difference is…? 🤔
Qualcomm si allea con ByteDance (TikTok) sui chip per l’intelligenza artificiale Per vedere altri post come questo, segui la comunità @informatica Qualcomm ha raggiunto un accordo con la cinese ByteDance, proprietaria della popolare app TikTok, per la fornitura di chip destinati ai data center per l’intelligenza artificiale. Un risultato
Wow crazy coincidence that they decided to ban tiktok after it became overwhelmingly pro Palestine unlike other social media platforms.
Nella classifica dei 20 libri più amati su BookTok ben 6 romance di Felicia Kingsley @libri https://www.illibraio.it/news/booktok/booktok-bestseller-list-felicia-kingsley-1499498/ Torna la #BookTok Bestseller List di TikTok. A trionfare è il romance in tutte le sue sfumature. Protagonista con ben 6 libri in top 20 è Felicia Kingsley - I particolari Leggi l’articolo completo Nella classifica dei 20 libri più amati su BookTok ben 6 romance di Felicia Kingsley.
Alternatively, we, in the EU could just… Stop using Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok or whatever being used to harvest our data?
Angry and nihilistic teenagers used to have tech skills and laptops. Now they have iPads and TikTok.
Saw a TikTok that said something like "Hey any IOF soldiers who don’t feel like they can live with what you’ve done, just know that you don’t have to." Glad to see one of them came to the same conclusion.
I’m glad he gets to waste not only his money, but Meta’s and TikTok’s too.
Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol made 1,794x the average worker at the company last year. New ballot initiatives in LA and San Francisco would force big corps like Starbucks to close pay gaps — by penalizing companies that insist on paying CEOs huge salaries while workers suffer. Credits: Producer: Liz Scheltens Editor: Joey Yee Motion Graphics: Joey Yee Videographers: Rachel Hastings, Anita Kwan, Derek Knowles Video Production Manager: Isabel Atalaya Video Production Coordinator: Jodi Clemens Video Production Fellow: Astrid Dong Supervising Producer: Sam Quigley More Perfect Union is an Emmy-winning, nonprofit newsroom whose mission is to build power for working people. Here’s what that means: We report on the real struggles and challenges of the working class from a working-class perspective. We attempt to connect those problems to potential solutions. We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power. And we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems. To support our independent journalism, subscribe, donate, and follow our other pages through the links below: Help fund our reporting: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mpu-splash Substack: https://substack.perfectunion.us/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moreperfectunion Twitter: https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/moreperfectunion.bsky.social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MorePerfectUS Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perfectunion/ Threads: https://www.threads.net/@perfectunion Website: https://www.perfectunion.us/ From More Perfect Union via This RSS Feed.
Can we please leave TikTok face on TikTok? I come here specifically to escape the brain rot.