Before short-form video content took over the internet on TikTok and Instagram Reels, there was Vine. Vine was a social media platform where users uploaded 6 second long videos. Twitter, which purchased the platform in 2012, shut it down four years later. Now, Vine is back, courtesy of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. And yes, your old Vines are back online.

Dorsey’s nonprofit “And Other Stuff” funded the new app, known as Divine. Divine revives the classic Vine experience, giving users access to a substantial collection of original clips and the ability to upload new content. This project focuses on open source, experimental social media. At a time when social media platforms are filled with AI-generated content, or AI slop, Divine positions itself as an alternative rooted in human creativity and nostalgia.

How does Divine get old Vine uploads back?

After Vine was shut down in 2016, the archive team managed to preserve a large collection of videos, although the files were not unwieldy for casual viewing. According to TechCrunch, Evan Henshaw-Plath, an early Twitter employee known as Rubble, led the technical effort to recreate Vine’s content from large binary files preserved by the Archive team. Henshaw-Plath spent several months writing scripts to extract and reconstruct these videos, along with user information and a subset of original comments and engagement data, forming the foundation of Devine’s library.

Henshaw-Path wanted to bring a nostalgic feel with Divine. He told TechCrunch, “Can we do something that’s nostalgic? Can we do something that takes us back, lets us see those old things, and also an era of social media where you can control your algorithms or just follow whoever you want, knowing that a real person recorded the video?”

Devine now hosts 150,000 to 200,000 archived Vine videos from approximately 60,000 creators. This represents a “good percentage” of the most popular content, although many exclusive and K-pop videos were not preserved. Still, major Vine personalities and memorable clips are available for discovery.

How to get your Vine account back?

The Divine app lets creators claim old accounts, request removal of content via DMCA, or upload new videos. To ensure that uploads are human-made, Divine uses verification technology from the Guardian Project, which differentiates itself from platforms that allow AI-generated content. Suspicious generative AI content is flagged and blocked, while maintaining a feed of authentic, user-generated videos.

Rubble believes that Divine addresses the desire for genuine online experiences amid the rise of AI-driven engagement. As he said, “Companies look at AI engagement and think people want it, but we also want agency over our lives and social experiences. There’s a nostalgia for the early Web 2.0 era, for an era of building communities rather than just gaming algorithms.”

divine is open source

Unlike traditional social media, Divine is built on Nostra, an open-source protocol backed by Dorsey. This allows developers to create their own applications and run independent servers, ensuring that the network cannot be controlled by a single entity. Dorsey explained, as quoted by TechCrunch, “Nostr—the underlying open source protocol—empowers developers to build a new generation of apps without VC-backing, toxic business models, or huge engineering teams. The reason nonprofits and other content are funded is to let creative engineers like Rubble show what’s possible using a permissionless protocol that can’t be shut down by a corporate owner.”

How to download divine?

Divine is available on Divine.video on iOS and Android. You can also sign in and view posts on the website on desktop.