Nearly a decade after Twitter pulled the plug on Vine, the beloved 6-second video app is back — this time under the name Divine. It’s now available as a free download on the App Store.
Video app Vine returns as Divine
With the internet now dominated by algorithm-driven feeds and AI-generated slop, the return of Vine appears to be a nostalgic resurrection with a modern twist. The six-second video loop that helped define early social media is being recast as an antidote to today’s hyper-optimized content machine, betting that what users actually miss isn’t just the format, but Vine’s raw, human weirdness.
The Divine app launched Wednesday, offering access to an archive of roughly 500,000 Vine videos restored from a backup of the original service, according to TechCrunch. It also allows creators to post new Vines for the first time since the platform went dark in 2017.
A nonprofit formed in May 2025 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey called “and Other Stuff” financed the project. The group focuses on funding experimental open source projects with the potential to transform social media. But Dorsey’s involvement isn’t that of a traditional investor seeking a financial return, apparently. Instead, he described the effort as an attempt to correct an earlier mistake he made as Twitter’s CEO — shutting Vine down.
Once super-popular
At its peak, Vine became the most downloaded iOS app and boasted more than 200 million active users. Twitter shuttered it in January 2017, just four years after acquiring the company, citing declining engagement.
The new Divine app was built by Evan Henshaw-Plath — known online as “Rabble” — an early Twitter employee and member of “and Other Stuff.” Henshaw-Plath dug into an archive of Vine’s content that had been preserved by a community project called the Archive Team. It had stored the videos as large binary files between 40GB and 50GB in size. Reconstructing them required writing big data scripts to decode the files and restore the associated user engagement data — views, likes and comments.
The Divine app initially launched to testers last November with around 100,000 of Vine’s top videos. It now hosts roughly 500,000 videos from nearly 100,000 original Vine creators.
OG creators are back on board
The revival has attracted several early Vine stars. They include Lele Pons, JimmyHere, MightyDuck and Jack and Jack. Pons, one of Vine’s biggest breakout personalities, expressed enthusiasm for the relaunch. He said the platform was the beginning of everything for many creators and a pivotal moment in internet culture.
Rabble said it was actually the original Vine community that pushed the team to slow down and get things right rather than rushing to ship. They wanted something that would reset social media, not simply trade on nostalgia.
No AI slop allowed
One of Divine’s most distinctive design choices is its firm stance against AI-generated content. To keep the platform free from algorithmically generated videos, Divine requires users to either record footage directly within the app or verify how uploaded videos were created using C2PA. That’s an open industry standard that establishes the origin and edit history of digital content.
The app is built on the open social protocol Nostr, and the team is also experimenting with integrating the AT Protocol, which underpins Bluesky. It also explores future integration with ActivityPub, the protocol behind Mastodon and Flipboard, and also built into Meta’s Threads.
Video app Vine returns as Divine: How to get it
Divine has no revenue model and structures itself as a public benefit corporation. Potential future monetization paths include a Pro tier and creator-friendly tools like Patreon-style support.
The app is free to download on the App Store and Google Play. Access initially rolls out to those on the waitlist, with others gaining entry gradually through invite codes, TechCrunch said.
David Snow, an expert on Apple hardware and software, writes on a variety of technological and cultural topics for Cult of Mac. They include Apple news, technology buying guides, and features about computer setups and Apple TV shows and movies.
With 30 years of experience covering technology and other subjects, he has written and edited for numerous print and online publications, including CMP Media, TechTV.com, CNET, Wired News, Red Herring magazine, Law.com, The National Law Journal and Law Technology News magazine. Among other roles, he served as executive editor of the Law.com network of websites and editorial director, technology, for ALM Media.
Snow graduated with a B.A. from Syracuse University with majors in magazine journalism and psychology. While there, he worked as a reporter for The Daily Orange newspaper and associate editor of Equal Time magazine.
Founder of the blog At the Waterline, he can be reached on X (formerly Twitter) via @atthewaterline and on Mastodon via @dsnow.
