Deals
Vine Returns As Divine
Jack Dorsey, best known as a co-founder of Twitter, Bluesky and Block (formerly Square), has backed the app Divine, an open-source, relaunched version of the influential short-form video social media app Vine. The launch of the new app this past week comes almost 10 years after Vine was shuttered and archived by Twitter, its then-parent company. Divine is being developed by Evan Henshaw-Plath, known online as “Rabble,” and is backed by his non-profit collective “and Other Stuff,” which is financially backed by Dorsey. Notable features of Divine include its archive of previous Vines and a policy designed to prevent AI-generated videos on the platform.
Vine was founded in 2012, acquired by Twitter the same year, and launched in 2013. TikTok is often described as a successor to Vine, with its focus on short videos within a social platform. The same year that Vine was archived and its short-format videos were rolled into Twitter, TikTok’s sister app Douyin was launched. By 2020, Instagram and YouTube had also launched short-form video features (Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts). Many social media users questioned Twitter’s reasoning for discontinuing and archiving Vine in 2016, including Vine’s founder, Rus Yusupov, according to the Guardian. The relaunch of the app alongside archived content appears to be an attempt by former Twitter employees Dorsey and Rabble to correct that mistake, and to address a desire for more short-form content. Sarah Perez reported for TechCrunch that the Divine app has an archive of many older Vine videos (presently almost 500,000 videos according to the sidebar on the company’s website), and provides an opportunity for beginner and returning users to craft new short clips.
The app launched a beta version in November 2025, inviting some previous Vine users to return to an early version of the app. Initially invite-only, with opportunities for additional invitations, Divine is currently public and free. During the beta, the team rewrote portions of the code and developed features like compilation mode, which autoplays streams of Vines by hashtag.
Several former Vine creators have been involved or expressed support, including Lele Pons, JimmyHere, MightyDuck, and Jack and Jack. Other early Vine stars whose content is in the archive include Liza Koshy, Logan Paul, David Dobrik, Drew Gooden, Thomas Sanders, Danny Gonzalez, Sam and Colby and Hannah Stocking. The archive of old videos drew from work from Archive.org. Original Vine creators retain copyrights and can claim their old accounts, or request that their videos are removed.
Divine is notable for its rejection of AI-generated content, something that Henshaw-Plath excluded intentionally according to a statement made to TechCrunch. Company policy prevents usage of AI by only allowing content to either be filmed in-app or undergo verification and detection processes to filter out generated content. Users can also report AI usage. Previous rumors from Tumblr in 2025 had suggested that the app could be used to train AI content, given some of “and Other Stuff” projects involve AI. An older but currently live staging page for “and Other Stuff” describes Nostr, the open-source protocol used by Divine, as the “best protocol for open source AI development.” Divine’s FAQ page addresses this concern about AI directly. Under “Is Divine going to sell our data or content to AI companies?”, the company states: “No, Divine is not in the business of selling user data or content to AI companies for training. We don’t do it, we won’t do it. We can’t stop AI companies which want to ignore terms of service and people’s copyright from scraping publicly accessible data, just like it’s hard to stop AI companies from scraping publicly available websites.” The app also promises not to sell personal information “in the traditional sense.”
Divine is available for free on the App Store, Google Play Store and Zapstore, a decentralized app store launched by Rabble that also has backing from Dorsey. The app has been endorsed by many former high-profile Vine users. Since the app’s public launch, it has jumped up to the top 20 most-downloaded apps in the U.S. App Store’s Social category and has over 10,000 downloads on the Google Play Store. Divine has no framework for revenue at present. Rabble has suggested a potential for Patreon-style or Pro account (possibly like premium features of X or Instagram) options in the future, and believes that the app could give some control back to creators, leading to potential for monetization from using partners, like brand partnerships.
