diVine is Vine back from the dead, thanks (in part) to Jack Dorsey
Cast your mind back a few years – well, several, actually – and you may well remember Vine. The social network focused on short-form videos, and it was killed off nearly 10 years ago. Now, re-entering a very busy social arena, Vine is back.
This time, the platform is going by the name diVine, and it is partly funded by one of Jack Dorsey’s ventures. This is not just a relaunch of the old video sharing platform; there is an attempt to resurrect as much of the original content as possible.
If you are hoping for a complete carbon copy of the original Vine, this is not what diVine is about. To start with, an old backup is being used to restore thousands of videos and comments from just before shutdown. Moving forward, though, this is a platform for new content.
diVine is looking to make itself stand out from endless social competition by taking a firm stance against AI. The tagline for the platform is:
Short-form looping videos. Authentic moments. Human creativity.
The aim is to detect AI-generated content and block it from being uploaded. Whether this works in practice remains to be seen, but the idea is one that will please anyone who has tired of AI slop in their social feeds.
Like platforms such as Bluesky and Mastodon, diVine is decentralized:
Experience the raw, unfiltered creativity of real people sharing genuine moments in 6-second loops. Built on decentralized technology, owned by no one, controlled by everyone.
Speaking to TechCrunch, ex-Twitter employee and diVine co-founder Evan Henshaw-Plath (Rabble) said:
Companies see the AI engagement and they think that people want it. They’re confusing, like — yes, people engage with it; yes, we’re using these things — but we also want agency over our lives and over our social experiences. So I think there’s a nostalgia for the early Web 2.0 era, for the blogging era, for the era that gave us podcasting, the era that you were building communities, instead of just gaming the algorithm
At time of writing, the beta spaces for the iOS and Android apps are fully used, so you will have to wait until some are freed up (“Our beta test is full and we can't let more folks on the apps until Apple and Google do their thing”). You can express interest here and sign up for notification when there are spaces by providing your email address.
In the meantime, however, you can still try out diVine on the web. You can sign up for a free account right now here.