Divine Resurrects Vine: Jack Dorsey-Backed Platform Champions Human-Made Content Against AI Takeover

'Divine' is a Jack Dorsey-backed Vine reboot for 2025

Nearly a decade after going offline, Vine is (sort of) back and, in a truly bizarre twist, Jack Dorsey is at least partially responsible. An early Twitter employee has released a beta version of a rebooted Vine -- now called "Divine" -- that revives the app's six-second videos and includes a portion of the original app's archive. The project comes from Evan Henshaw-Plath, a former Twitter employee who goes by "Rabble," and has backing from Dorsey's nonprofit "and Other Stuff," which funds experimental social media apps built on the open source nostr protocol. Rabble has so far managed to resurrect about 170,000 videos from the original Vine thanks to an old archive created before Twitter shut down the app in 2017. In an FAQ on Divine's website, he says that he also hopes to restore "millions" of user comments and profile photos associated with those original posts as well. But Divine is more than just a home for decade-old clips. New users can create six-second looping videos of their own for the platform. The app also has many elements that will be familiar to people who have used Bluesky or other decentralized platforms, including customizable controls for content moderation and multiple feed algorithms to choose from. The site's FAQ says Divine plans to support custom, user-created algorithms too. Divine is also taking a pretty strong stance against AI-generated content. The app will have built-in AI detection tools that will add badges to content that's been verified as not created or edited with AI tools. And, according to TechCrunch, the app will block uploads of suspected AI content. "We're in the middle of an AI takeover of social media," Divine explains on its website. New apps like Sora are entirely AI-generated. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are increasingly flooded with AI slop -- videos that look real but were never captured by a camera, people who don't exist, scenarios that never happened. Divine is fighting back. We're creating a space where human creativity is celebrated and protected, where you can trust that what you're watching was made by a real person with a real camera, not generated by an algorithm." While all that may sound intriguing, Divine has a long way to go before it can accomplish all that. The app hasn't made it onto either app store yet, though it's already added 10,000 people to an iOS beta, according to its founder. In the meantime, you can also browse some of the app's videos, including some old Vine posts, on its website, though not all of the videos are working properly at the moment. Still, any kind of reboot is good news for fans of the original, who have long hoped the app might make a comeback. Elon Musk has suggested more than once that he would revive Vine in some way, but has yet to follow through.

Vine gets a reboot that prioritizes human-made videos

Before there was TikTok and Instagram Reels, there was Vine. The app that allowed for only six seconds of video was home to some amazing creative content and turned some of its celebrities into stars beyond the platform. But just like the videos it hosted, Vine's life was short; it launched in 2013 and was shuttered by Twitter in 2017. Nothing truly dies on the internet, though, and Vine is (sort of) back as Divine. Divine is now host to over 100,000 hours of archived Vine content, and is also a place where creators can once again post short-form content. The new Divine has no affiliation with the original Vine, though it does have financial backing from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's nonprofit "and Other Stuff" and is built by Evan Henshaw-Plath, a member of the "and Other Stuff" and a former Twitter employee. Divine aims to restore creator ownership and authenticity The inspiration to bring back Divine has its roots in the Revolution.Social podcast, which is hosted by Henshaw-Plath under the moniker Rabble. On the show, both tech exec Yoel Roth and tech journalist Taylor Lorenz expressed how they missed Vine and its unique culture. That led Henshaw-Plath to build Divine on Nostr, a decentralized social networking protocol supported by Dorsey. In a statement to TechCruch, Dorsey said: "The reason I funded the non-profit, and Other Stuff, is to allow creative engineers like Rabble to show what's possible in this new world, by using permissionless protocols which can't be shut down based on the whim of a corporate owner." The preserved Vine videos on Divine come from a backup done in 2016 by a collective called ArchiveTeam. Henshaw-Plath then reconstructured the content, including oarts of the information associated with them like views and some comments. A dedication to human-made social media "Divine has imported archived videos from ArchiveTeam's preservation work, giving these authentic pre-AI era videos a new home on the decentralized web. We're committed to restoring creator ownership and attribution when possible, honoring those who created these cultural artifacts." - Divine statement Divine acknowledges the AI takeover that has consumed video-based social media thanks to apps like Sora, and promises that won't be the case on its platform. To do this, it utilizes a technology called ProofMode that cryptographically verifies that videos being posted on Divine are captured by actual cameras, and are not AI-generated. Divine asserts, "We're not against AI existing -- we're against AI pretending to be human. We're creating a space where human creativity is celebrated and protected, where you can trust that what you're watching was made by a real person with a real camera, not generated by an algorithm." It will be interesting to see if creators and consumers of short-form content accept a return to how the medium began.

The return of Vine is my favourite internet plot twist of 2025

For a moment back there, Vine was the most fun place on the internet. The video sharing platform, which allowed looping videos of up to 6 seconds, was a haven for absurd humour, in a time before TikTok and Reels came along to infest our feeds with ads and slop. When the app shut down in 2017, it seemed like the end - but, in my favourite internet plot twist of 2025, it's back. According to several reports, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, is resurrecting Vine. And while it might feature a stupid new name, diVine, it does come with over 150,000 archived Vine clips reinstated. And best of all, AI is banned. Is this the Twitter alternative we've been waiting for? The resurrection comes courtesy of and Other Stuff, Dorsey's non-profit organisation focussed on experimental open source projects. In an interview with TechCrunch, early Twitter employee and developer of the new diVine app explains, "So basically, I'm like, can we do something that's kind of nostalgic? Can we do something that takes us back, that lets us see those old things, but also lets us see an era of social media where you could either have control of your algorithms, or you could choose who you follow, and it's just your feed, and where you know that it's a real person that recorded the video?" The team was able to salvage over 150k videos from an archive of a few million. But Henshaw-Plath says a "good percentage" of the most popular Vine videos are there. As long as the below clip, my all-time favourite, is there, I'm good. To verify that clips aren't aI generated, the new app uses technology from the the Guardian Projec to confirm content was recorded on a smartphone. Explaining the focus on authenticity, Henshaw-Plath tells TechCrunch, "yes, we're using [AI] -- but we also want agency over our lives and over our social experiences. So I think there's a nostalgia for the early Web 2.0 era, for the blogging era, for the era that gave us podcasting, the era that you were building communities, instead of just gaming the algorithm." Indeed, with generative video models like Sora gaining the ability to create scarily realistic clips, and pretty much every announcement at Adobe Max 2025 being focussed on AI, nostalgia for a simpler time online is at an all time high. Slop is everywhere - including at the very top of Google, courtesy of its (often reliable) AI Overviews, and the internet of just ten years ago feels quaint in comparison. Can a series of silly 6-second clips save us? Perhaps not - but if they offer a fleeting distraction from the Tilly Norwoods of this world, then I'm all for it.