ShinyShiny snippets: Donald Trump’s Truth Social launches

Donald Trump is aiming to make a social media comeback by starting his own app – after being booted off mainstream platforms last year. The app, which allows users to post and share a “truth” as they would a tweet, has launched on Apple’s App Store. Truth Social has been touted as America’s “Big Tent” social media platform that encourages free speech without discriminating against political ideology. Details of the app have trickled out in the last week as testers trialled a beta version of the platform. Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the venture behind Truth Social, led by former Republican US representative Devin Nunes, is the latest in a growing number of technology companies positioning themselves as champions of free speech. Sky News

With each new numbered iteration of a premium smartphone that arrives on the scene, there’s usually at least one big selling point that marketing departments will latch onto in order to make consumers want to upgrade their handset. Usually, it’s a radically updated camera with a suite of new photographic features. Other times, manufacturers will bring drastic improvements to display resolutions and refresh rates. However, that isn’t the case with Samsung’s newly announced Galaxy S22 Ultra. For the first time in recent memory, the South Korean electronics giant’s latest flagship doesn’t have a standout new feature. Tech Radar

Lotus Cars is pushing ahead with plans to float its Lotus Technology division on the stock market in a move that would value it at £5-6 billion, the company has said. Lotus is in the middle of a roadshow starting in China and is currently in London to give potential investors a sneak preview of next year’s electric SUV, codenamed Type 132. The Geely-owned brand told investors that it plans to sell 100,000 cars per year by 2028, of which 90,000 will be electric saloons and SUVs produced by Lotus Technology. Autocar 

When Mark Zuckerberg described the metaverse last year, he conjured an image of harmonious social connections in an immersive virtual world. But his company’s first iterations of the space have not been very harmonious. Several women have reported incidents of harassment, including a beta tester who was virtually groped by a stranger and another who was virtually gang-raped within 60 seconds of entering Facebook’s Horizon Venues social platform. I had several uncomfortable moments with male strangers on social apps run by both Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly known as Facebook Inc.) and Microsoft Corp. when I visited them in December. Bloomberg

Beauty suppliers to THG are restricting the flow of stock to Matthew Moulding’s online retail empire over concerns it is too aggressively discounting to hit sales targets, The Telegraph can reveal. Dermalogica, an upmarket skincare brand owned by Unilever, is among the big names which have taken action to protect their pricing by reducing supplies to THG. The consumer goods giant is a growing force in luxury beauty products and it is understood concerns over THG have grown in recent months across parts of the industry. Telegraph