Remember Vine? The six-second loops that defined a generation of internet humor and launched a thousand memes? For years, its shutdown left a void, one that platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts filled with increasingly algorithmically-driven, often AI-assisted content. But now, a surprising team is bringing it back—not as a corporate clone, but as a statement.
Enter DiVine, a new application that resurrects the spirit and the actual archive of Vine, but with a fiercely human-first philosophy and a decentralized backbone. It’s a project backed by former Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and rebuilt from the ground up by early Twitter engineer Evan Henshaw-Plath, known in tech circles as ‘Rabble’.
This isn't just a nostalgia trip; it's a pointed critique of the current state of social media.
More Than a Reboot: A Resurrection of the Archive
The most immediate draw for many will be DiVine's resurrection of the original Vine archive. In a technical feat, the team managed to reconstruct the beloved video library from a community backup.
"We reconstructed the archive from a community backup," Henshaw-Plath explained. DiVine now hosts an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 recovered videos from roughly 60,000 original creators, representing a "good percentage" of the platform's most popular and culturally significant clips.
But this isn't just a museum. The team is prioritizing creator ownership from the start. Original Viners can request access to their old accounts, allowing them to reclaim their content or remove it permanently. The restoration is also practical, including historical view counts and a subset of original comments, adding a layer of authenticity to the time capsule.
As Rabble told TechCrunch, the initial idea was rooted in nostalgia, but it evolved into a mission to restore digital ownership. "So basically, I’m like, can we do something that’s kind of nostalgic?" he said. That vision has now materialized into a full-fledged platform.
The "Anti-AI" Stance: A Wall Against the "Slop"
Where DiVine diverges most sharply from modern competitors is in its core principles. The platform is being framed by its founders as a direct "corrective" to the flood of AI-generated content they refer to as "slop" clogging other timelines.
To that end, DiVine will actively flag and block uploads it suspects are synthetic or AI-generated. This isn't just a simple filter; the app will leverage a combination of device-provenance checks and verification tooling from the privacy-focused Guardian Project. The goal is to cryptographically confirm that a video was recorded on a real, physical phone camera—a digital seal of approval for human-made content.
This aggressive anti-AI stance is a bold bet that users are craving authenticity and the raw, imperfect creativity that defined the early social web.
A Decentralized Future, Funded by Dorsey
The tech stack behind DiVine is as ideological as its content rules. The application is built on Nostr, a decentralized, open-source protocol. This means anyone can spin up their own relay or media host, preventing any single entity from controlling the network.
This architecture is a direct response to the "corporate algorithmic gardens" that the founders believe made the original Vine unsustainable under Twitter's ownership. Funding for the project was provided by Dorsey’s nonprofit, ‘and Other Stuff,’ to demonstrate what "permissionless social" can look like in practice.
By going decentralized, DiVine aims to be resilient, user-controlled, and immune to the sudden shutdown that doomed its predecessor.
The Road Ahead: Skepticism and a New Creator Economy
Early reactions to DiVine's announcement have been mixed. While many on platforms like X and Reddit have welcomed the return of a curated, simpler video format, others are skeptical of another Dorsey-backed experiment. The central question is whether a small, principled app can survive in an ecosystem dominated by scale and aggressive advertising.
Monetization is a key challenge. DiVine is explicitly not chasing the mass-virality model of TikTok. Instead, it's leaning into a boutique creator economy powered by tipping, micropayments, and direct user support, bypassing the ad-based models that power its competitors.
The big unknowns remain: Will creators return to reclaim their old accounts in significant numbers? Can a decentralized, chronological feed compete with addictive algorithms for user attention? And will developers flock to build on its open-source foundation?
A Statement as Much as an App
For now, DiVine stands as a tidy, powerful experiment. It is a nostalgia engine, a functional archive, a technical achievement, and a stark anti-AI statement all rolled into one. It serves as a reminder that human-made content, with all its flaws and spontaneity, still holds immense cultural currency.
Whether it recaptures the magic of Vine's heyday or remains a beloved niche platform, its very existence challenges the direction of modern social media. If you're interested in being part of this experiment from the beginning, you can join the mobile app waitlist on their official site and see if DiVine can one day grow the deep-rooted traction its predecessor was famous for.