Nearly ten years after shutting down early short video platform Vine, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s non-profit has brought it back along with a significant part of its archives.
Divine is the sound-alike name for the re-launch. Public access to Divine is now open; you can browse some of it on the website before you install.
Vine foreshadowed the rise of short video format like those on Tiktok, YouTube shorts and Instagram reels when it emerged in 2013. Despite a devoted userbase, Twitter — then run by co-founder Jack Dorsey — shuttered the service in 2017. (Tiktok would emerge as the international version of Chinese app Douyin later the same year.)
Surprisingly, the relaunch includes a large part (but not all) of Vine’s original archives, which were saved by internet heroes Archive Team when Dorsey pulled the plug on the platform. “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 also plans to filter out the AI slop dominating short video platforms and basically all of human communications these days, delighting rot-brained boomers and zoomers with videos of beagles playing tubas, John Wayne fighting the Viet Cong or D4vd singing showtunes with Patrick Bateman. Divine intentionally requires users to record their videos live with the Divine app, or validate that no AI was used via the spec maintained by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity.
Divine is not legally connected to the old Vine (or X, renamed after the company was purchased by Elon Musk). It is financed by Dorsey’s non-profit entity called “And Other Stuff.” Divine itself is structured as a benefit corporation similar to Kickstarter.
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