Is Vine back? Short-form video-sharing app Divine opens to public

Divine, a new short-form video-sharing app, has launched to the public as a possible successor to Vine. Similar to Vine, Divine allows users to create and share six-second looping videos. The app houses over two million original Vine videos and aims to differentiate itself from other platforms by prohibiting AI-generated content.

Its founder, former Twitter employee Evan Henshaw-Plath, created Divine to bring about a reset in social media, expressing his frustration with AI-generated videos. Henshaw-Plath emphasized that he wants users to be able to enjoy the platform without second-guessing the authenticity of the content. At its peak, Vine boasted over 200 million monthly active users and was instrumental in launching the careers of several internet stars.

Divine is backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and utilizes a decentralized system called Nostr, allowing users to potentially transfer their accounts and content to other services that use the same system. To ensure all videos on the app are human-made, Divine has implemented several measures, including requiring users to record videos live within the app and using a verification tool called ProofMode, which functions like a digital receipt for media.

Users can also flag suspected AI content, and automated and human systems will work together to detect signs of AI involvement. Despite these efforts, social media analyst Matt Nevarra believes that Divine's unique approach to combatting addiction could be both its strength and its biggest challenge. The app has already gained significant traction, with 10,000 users installing it within the first few hours of its public launch, overwhelming its servers.

Henshaw-Plath initially aimed to recreate Vine's short-video format but discovered that the Internet Archive had preserved a copy of Vine's data, allowing him to reconstruct and include over 10,000 original videos. He compared the app's format to poetry, emphasizing the value of concise, meaningful content. The challenge for Divine now lies in translating this nostalgia into a format that appeals to a new generation of social media users.