Jack Dorsey Backs diVine: A Vine Reboot With Original Archive
▼ Summary
– The new app diVine will provide access to over 100,000 archived Vine videos and allow users to create profiles and upload new content.
– DiVine will flag and block suspected generative AI content, differentiating it from traditional social media platforms.
– The project was funded by Jack Dorsey’s nonprofit “and Other Stuff” and built on the decentralized Nostr protocol, making it open source.
– Early Twitter employee Evan Henshaw-Plath reconstructed the Vine archive from large binary files to create the app’s foundation.
– Vine creators retain copyright ownership and can request takedowns or reclaim their accounts to post new or restored content.
In a digital era increasingly saturated with artificial intelligence, a fresh initiative is reviving the beloved six-second looping video format, supported by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The new application, diVine, launches with an impressive collection of over 100,000 archived Vine clips, all restored from a backup made prior to the platform’s original shutdown. This isn’t merely a nostalgic trip; users can create personal profiles and upload their own new videos. However, in a notable departure from typical social platforms, diVine will actively flag and block any content suspected of being AI-generated, ensuring a space for authentic human creativity.
Dorsey’s nonprofit organization, “and Other Stuff,” established in May 2025, provided the financial backing for diVine. This entity focuses on funding experimental open-source projects and tools with the potential to reshape social media. Evan Henshaw-Plath, an early Twitter staffer now with “and Other Stuff,” spearheaded the effort by delving into the Vine archive. After Twitter announced it would discontinue Vine in 2016, a volunteer group known as the Archive Team stepped in to preserve the content. This collective, separate from Archive.org, works to rescue online material at risk of being lost forever.
The Archive Team had stored Vine’s videos as massive binary files ranging from 40 to 50 gigabytes, making them impractical for casual viewing. Henshaw-Plath, who goes by Rabble, saw an opportunity. He wondered whether it was possible to extract and reconstruct the original Vine content to serve as the foundation for a new mobile app. “I asked myself, can we create something nostalgic?” Rabble shared with TechCrunch. “Can we revisit those old moments while also returning to a social media era where you controlled your algorithms, chose who to follow, and knew the person behind the video was real?”
Rabble dedicated several months to writing big data scripts and deciphering the file structures. He successfully reconstructed not only the videos but also details about the original Vine users and their engagement metrics, such as view counts and a selection of comments. “I couldn’t recover everything, but I managed to salvage a significant portion,” he explained. “We rebuilt these Vines and their creators, giving each person a new profile on this open network.”
According to Rabble, the app includes a “good percentage” of the most popular Vine videos, though many less-viewed clips are absent. For example, millions of K-pop-focused videos were never archived. “We have roughly 150,000 to 200,000 videos from about 60,000 creators,” he noted, pointing out that Vine originally hosted a couple of million users and several million creators by comparison.
Vine creators retain copyright over their work and can submit a DMCA takedown request if they wish to have their content removed from diVine. Alternatively, they can verify their identity by proving they still control the social media accounts linked in their original Vine bios. This process isn’t automated, so response times may vary if many creators attempt verification simultaneously. Once their account is restored, creators can post new videos or re-upload any missing archival content.
To confirm that newly uploaded videos are made by humans, diVine employs technology from the Guardian Project, a human rights nonprofit. This system helps verify that content was genuinely recorded on a smartphone, among other authenticity checks. Additionally, because diVine is built on Nostr, a decentralized protocol championed by Dorsey, and is open source, developers can create their own apps, hosts, relays, and media servers.
“Nostr, the underlying open source protocol powering diVine, enables developers to build a new wave of applications without venture capital backing, toxic business models, or large engineering teams,” Dorsey stated. “I funded the nonprofit ‘and Other Stuff’ to let creative engineers like Rabble demonstrate what’s achievable using permissionless protocols that can’t be shut down on a corporate whim.”
Elon Musk, the current owner of X (formerly Twitter), has also pledged to revive Vine, announcing in August that the company located the old video archive. However, no public launch has occurred yet. The team behind the Dorsey-supported diVine project believes their use of an online archive, combined with creators’ retained copyrights, constitutes fair use.
Rabble contends that there is substantial consumer interest in this kind of non-AI, community-driven social experience, even amid the rising popularity of generative AI tools like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta AI. “Companies observe AI engagement and assume that’s what people want,” Rabble remarked. “They’re mistaking usage for desire. Yes, people interact with AI, but we also crave agency in our lives and social interactions. I believe there’s a real nostalgia for the early Web 2.0 period, the blogging and podcasting era, when we built communities instead of trying to outsmart an algorithm.”
DiVine is now accessible for download on both iOS and Android devices at diVine.video.
(Source: TechCrunch)
