Nine years after Twitter shut it down, Vine is effectively back. Divine, a reboot of the beloved six-second looping video app, has dropped its invite-only signup and opened to everyone, with more than 2 million videos restored from Vine's original archive.
Who's behind it
Divine is funded by "and Other Stuff," a nonprofit formed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and is led technically by Evan "Rabble" Henshaw-Plath, one of Twitter's earliest employees, who oversaw the restoration of the Vine archive. The app runs on the decentralized Nostr protocol rather than being owned outright by a single company.
The pitch: no AI, full transparency
Divine's core differentiator from TikTok and Instagram is a strict ban on AI-generated or clipped-from-elsewhere content: users can only post videos recorded with the app's own camera, backed by built-in detection tools meant to filter out anything generated or repurposed. The app also shows users how its "For You" style feed algorithm works and lets them choose between different feed types.
I want to see things that are creative and are human and that are weird ... there's a way in which AI generates this sort of mediocrity.
Evan "Rabble" Henshaw-Plath, Divine
Where it stands now
The app had around 100,000 users as of its public opening and just announced its first brand partnership, with Taco Bell. Henshaw-Plath has framed the project as a response to broader frustration with algorithm-driven, increasingly AI-saturated mainstream platforms. "I look forward to a place where we can have a better idea of what healthy social media is," he said, "and where people think that it doesn't have to be this sort of nightmarish hellscape."
