Vine is back with 150,000 archives… and a total ban on AI

Almost ten years after Vine disappeared, the iconic six-second video app is back with a new version called diVine, funded by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. But this time, the project isn’t just about resurrecting a Proust’s madeleine: it wants to offer a 100% human social network where videos generated by AI are automatically detected… and blocked.

A return built on Vine’s archives

DiVine provides access to 150,000 to 200,000 restored Vine videos, taken from a huge backup saved in extremis by the Archive Team community after Vine’s closure was announced in 2016. Evan Henshaw-Plath (“Rabble”), a former Twitter employee and member of the Dorsey-funded collective, spent several months rebuilding the files, extracting the videos and reconstructing the profiles of 60,000 former creators, with the aim of returning to a time when social networks were simpler, more human and less dominated by algorithms. The diVine team is proud of this nostalgia.

Creators get their accounts (and their rights) back

Original creators retain ownership of their videos. They can request the deletion of an archive via DMCA, check that they are the owners of the account (via their former social networks) and republish their own old Vines or upload new content.

A social network without AI

The most distinctive feature of diVine is clear: no generative videos will be published. Thanks to technology from the Guardian Project, the app checks that each video really comes from a smartphone and is not synthetic. A rarity in a landscape where platforms are being invaded by new social networks such as Sora from ChatGPT or Vibes from Meta.

An open source, decentralised platform

DiVine is based on Nostr, the decentralised social protocol that Jack Dorsey has been passionate about since he left Twitter/X. Any developer can create their own app, the network cannot be ‘shut down’ by a corporate decision, and the whole project remains open source. Dorsey wants to create a new generation of social networks without investment funds, toxic models or centralised giants. Elon Musk has also announced that he wants to relaunch Vine on his own.

Nostalgia for a “pre-IA” Internet

For Rabble, there is a real demand for AI-free social spaces: “People still want to have control over their feed, to know that the video comes from a real person, not a generative model. This desire is part of a wider trend, with the return of forums like reddit and the success of niche communities.

DiVine is available now from their official website : diVine.video.