Divine, the new six-second looping video app that reimagines the spirit of early internet human creativity by restoring Vine classics and banning AI slop, launched in the Apple App Store and on Google Play.

Divine was announced in beta at the end of last year with a vision to put creative power back in human hands, and has since restored access to approximately 500,000 archived Vine videos from nearly 100k OG Vine creators including Lele Pons, Hannah Stocking, Jack and Jack, King Bach and Logan and Jake Paul, while enabling new six-second creations.

Nostalgia And Beyond

While rooted in the cultural legacy of short-form video, Divine is already seeing OG Viners including Lele Pons, JimmyHere, MightyDuck, and Jack and Jack, reclaim their accounts, curate their classics and create new content.

Lele Pons, whose career took-off on Vine while she was in high school, reached out to Divine's founder, Rabble, within hours of hearing about the app back in November.

"Many of us came from Vine and it was the beginning of everything. An iconic app. It was such a key moment in my own personal journey, and in internet culture, it makes me so happy to see these early classics brought back to life and to have the chance to make new ones," said Pons.

JimmyHere said: "Vine to me was the golden age of short form content. No AI. No crazy brand deals. Just a bunch of people with really crappy phone quality trying to entertain. With Divine we're going back to basics. I always felt the six-second restriction wasn't as much of a restriction, as an art form."

MightyDuck said: "I would be nothing without Vine… I am so excited about how my videos are about to resurface on Divine… and so excited to make new six-second content… it feels like I'm going home to where I belong!"

Built with Support from Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey has provided grant funding for Divine through And Other Stuff, the collective he funded to create and steward freedom tech through open tools, protocols, and applications that strengthen human liberty.

Accordingly, Divine has been built on the following principles:

• Creator ownership: creators retain control over their content and hence, their livelihoods
• Human-first content: a place for authentic, non-AI-generated media
• Deliberate design: focused on creativity and constraint over engagement for an ad algorithm
• Open and transparent: built on an open protocol, Nostr, with open source code

"By bringing back Vine on a decentralized network, they are finally correcting every mistake," said Jack Dorsey.

"It is no secret that we didn't find a business model for Vine. A founding principle for Divine is that creators will always be in full control of their content and followers, enabling them to create and grow their own revenue streams. I anticipate that Divine will provide a host of tools and services to support the growth of the creator economy," said Dorsey.

From Personal Project to A Movement

As Divine emerges from beta, what started as an experiment to restore a formative era of internet culture is evolving into a place for creative expression that gives creators full agency over their content and their followers.

"Divine began as a personal project to reconnect with a time when the internet felt creative, open, and unquestionably human," said Rabble, founder of Divine, and an original member of the team that created Twitter. "The overwhelming response we got to our initial announcement has turned my side project into more of a movement. The app launch is less about nostalgia, and more an antidote to what social media has become.

"Last year I crafted a new social media bill of rights having witnessed how far these platforms have strayed from our original intentions for an open and free internet. My belief is that by building on an open protocol (Nostr), with open source code, Divine will start to redress the balance of power by giving creators and users more of a say in their online social lives and businesses."

App Rollout

Divine is available in the Apple App Store, on Google Play and in the ZapStore. Access is currently via invite code, with broader rollout planned in the coming months. The roll-out strategy is designed to allow creators and their super fans to bring in their friends and network on the app gradually.

"Networks used to grow because people chose to be where their friends and favorite content creators were, not because they were pulled in by an advertising algorithm," Rabble said. "An invitation-only approach lets us rebuild that dynamic from the ground up."