New York (CNN) — Millennials, rejoice … the beloved video app Vine is being resurrected.
Well, sort of.
The internet mourned when Twitter shuttered the six-second, looping video app Vine in 2017. While Vine had struggled to build a viable business model in a crowded market, it pioneered short-form videos and spawned countless cultural references.
It also helped to launch celebrities like Logan Paul and Shawn Mendes. And it was viewed as a home for the kind of silly human creativity that, these days, is increasingly replaced in our feeds by AI slop.
Now, nearly a decade later, a new app aims to restore the format and spirit of its predecessor.
Divine, which similarly features a scrolling feed of six-second videos, officially launched last week after nine months of development and beta testing. Users can create content on the app and view its archive of more than 2 million original Vine posts.
Divine is not formally affiliated with Vine despite being inspired by original app, which was owned by X, then known as Twitter.
Unlike the rivals that helped push the original app out of business, Divine says it won’t allow users to post AI-generated content.
“I want to see things that are creative and are human and that are weird … there’s a way in which AI generates this sort of mediocrity,” the app’s founder, who goes by Rabble, told CNN.
Rabble, an early Twitter employee, created Divine with backing from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
Divine has already racked up around 100,000 users, Rabble said. Some have made videos inspired by 2010s memes, others have celebrated the return of a platform that hearkens back to a time when many felt less pessimistic about the role of social media in their lives. This week, it announced its first brand partnership with Taco Bell.
For those unfamiliar with the lore, Vine was founded in 2012 as one of the first apps to enable anyone to create and post short videos. It was acquired months later by Twitter for $30 million. Although it once felt like a ubiquitous part of online culture, it struggled to compete when rival apps like Instagram launched short-form video content. An already struggling Twitter announced plans to shut it down in 2016.
Before Vine was gone for good, volunteer internet archivists preserved many of its videos for posterity and Divine used this archive to restore some of the internet’s favorites.
Divine isn’t the only platform trying to tap into nostalgia. In a recent documentary, the owners of MySpace said they’re looking to revive the site.
The movement speaks to the frustration many internet users feel about their lack of control on mainstream social media apps — including how the algorithms shape their feeds and how content is moderated — especially after the controversial sale of X to Elon Musk, Rabble said.
Rabble wants to set Divine apart by giving users more transparency and control over the app’s operations.
The app offers a detailed explanation of the algorithm behind their “For You” page. And users can choose from feeds with different algorithms, like those focused on animals or style or the most popular videos on the app.
The app’s creators also say they’re using multiple forms of detection to try to prevent AI-generated content. The move follows efforts by Pinterest and LinkedIn to respond to users’ frustrations with AI slop in their feeds.
And Divine is built on a decentralized digital infrastructure, similar to X rival platforms Mastodon and Bluesky. That means users can easily move their content and profiles to other decentralized platforms. People could also use Divine’s open-sourced technology to create their own online communities without posting to the platform itself.
“I look forward to a place where we can have a better idea of what healthy social media is, and where people think that it doesn’t have to be this sort of nightmarish hellscape,” Rabble said. “I think this idea of not having human agency over how we make our own norms and rules has created a toxic culture.”
The-CNN-Wire
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