Jack Dorsey-backed Divine brings back Vine’s short-form video

Divine, a reboot of the short-form video service Vine, launched to the public today. The platform allows users to download and view archived videos and post new six-second looping clips. The project is financed by the nonprofit organization and Other Stuff, which was formed in May 2025 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey’s backing of the project is intended to correct his previous mistake of shutting down Vine during his tenure as Twitter CEO. The app initially launched to testers last November with some 100,000 of Vine’s top videos, growing to around 300,000 videos just ahead of today’s launch. Now, the public release hosts roughly 500,000 videos from nearly 100,000 original Vine creators.

The platform is built on Nostr, an open social protocol, and the development team is also experimenting with the AT Protocol. A core technical distinction of Divine is its active filtering of AI-generated content to avoid what developer Evan Henshaw-Plath, known online as Rabble, calls AI slop. To keep the network free of this content, Divine requires users to either record videos directly within the app or verify the origin of uploaded files using C2PA, an open industry standard for content provenance. “I decided that I was going to filter out AI content because I personally don’t like seeing AI content. I don’t like feeling tricked,” Henshaw-Plath said. The reconstruction of the archive required Henshaw-Plath to write big data scripts to process large 40-50 GB binary files originally saved by a community archiving project.

Divine currently has no revenue model and is structured as a public benefit corporation. While the initial plan was to release the app quickly after early testing, feedback from original Vine creators convinced the team to delay the launch to refine the design and features, such as a compilation mode for autoplaying video lists. Henshaw-Plath noted that early creators convinced the team that the project was more important than simple nostalgia when urging them to focus on content authenticity. Original creator Lele Pons described the platform as the beginning of everything for many early creators. The app is distributed as a free download on the App Store, Google Play, and the Nostr-powered Zapstore, utilizing invite codes to gradually onboard users from its waitlist.

Why it matters

Divine represents a key test of whether open-protocol social networks can successfully revive legacy platforms while rejecting both generative AI content and traditional monetization models.