Jack Dorsey brings video sharing app Vine back to life
What's the story
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has funded a project to revive the nostalgic six-second looping videos of Vine. The project, called diVine, provides access to over 100,000 archived Vine videos. These clips were saved from an old backup created before the original platform's demise. The app also lets users create profiles and upload their own new clips while flagging suspected generative AI content to prevent its posting.
Funding details
diVine is funded by Dorsey's nonprofit 'and other stuff'
The creation of diVine was funded by Dorsey's nonprofit organization, "and Other Stuff," which he established in May 2025. The new initiative primarily focuses on funding experimental open-source projects and other tools that could potentially revolutionize the social media landscape. Evan Henshaw-Plath, a former Twitter employee and member of "and Other Stuff," played a key role in the development of diVine by exploring the Vine archive after its shutdown in 2016.
Preservation efforts
Archive Team backed Vine videos before shutdown
When Twitter announced the shutdown of Vine, a group called the Archive Team backed up its videos. The community archiving project isn't affiliated with Archive.org, but is a collective working together to save websites that are at risk of disappearing. Henshaw-Plath (aka Rabble) spent months writing big data scripts and reconstructing these files along with information on old Vine users and their engagement with videos such as views and comments.
Nostalgic revival
Rabble believes he has a good percentage of popular vines
Rabble envisions diVine as a platform that offers a "nostalgic" experience while also providing control over algorithms and following. He managed to extract a significant number of popular Vine videos, creating new user profiles on this open network. While he couldn't recover all content, Rabble believes the app has a "good percentage" of popular Vine videos with around 150,000 to 200,000 clips from about 60,000 creators.
Copyright considerations
Copyright owners can request removal of their content
Vine creators who still hold copyright to their work can request removal through a DMCA takedown or verify their account ownership, by showing they still have access to the social media accounts linked in their Vine bio. Once verified, they can post new videos or upload old content that was missed during restoration. To verify new uploads are human-made, Rabble is using technology from the Guardian Project, a human rights nonprofit.
Tech foundation
diVine is built on Nostr
The diVine is built on Nostr, a decentralized protocol favored by Dorsey. The open-source nature allows developers to set up and create their own apps and run their own hosts, relays, and media servers. "Nostr - the underlying open-source protocol being used by diVine - is empowering developers to create a new generation of apps without the need for VC-backing," said Dorsey in a statement.