According to Inc, Evan “Rabble” Henshaw-Plath, Twitter’s first engineer, is leading a reboot of the six-second video app Vine, now called diVine. The project is funded by an investment from Jack Dorsey, who originally bought Vine for Twitter for $30 million before its 2012 public launch. The new app launched in beta last month, has resurfaced over 100,000 archived Vines, and enforces a strict policy that automatically flags and removes AI-generated content. The November beta was so popular it exceeded Apple’s 10,000-user limit and crashed the site. Rabble developed diVine with the nonprofit And Other Stuff, building it on the open-source protocol Nostr, and it is entirely independent of the original Vine, which is now owned by X.
The Nostalgia Play
Look, the pitch here is incredibly potent. Rabble is tapping into a very real, very widespread fatigue. The desire for a timeline you control, for content made by humans, for a place not optimized for outrage and engagement-at-all-costs is palpable. And pulling from the Vine archive is a genius move. It’s not just nostalgia for people who used it; it’s cultural archaeology for a generation that only knows these iconic loops as reposts. Giving Gen Z a chance to “participate” in that aesthetic is a sharp insight.
The Open-Source Gamble
Here’s the thing, though. The most interesting part isn’t the six-second loops. It’s the foundation. Building on Nostr is a radical departure from the walled gardens of Meta and TikTok. It’s an activist statement, aligning with Rabble’s long-held beliefs in an open internet and even a digital Bill of Rights. In theory, it prevents platform lock-in and corporate whims. But in practice? Open protocols can be clunky. The user experience is often the first sacrifice at the altar of decentralization. Can a platform focused on tight, snappy video thrive on infrastructure that’s still finding its feet?
The AI Ban and Scale Problem
The hardline no-AI policy is a fantastic branding move. It draws a clear line in the sand. But I have questions. How do you enforce that perfectly? And more importantly, can you scale a *social* platform today without eventually leaning on algorithms? Rabble’s vision of a simple, chronological feed is beautiful. It’s also what every platform starts with before they realize people can’t manually sort through millions of videos. The moment growth hits, the pressure to curate and promote will be immense. Will diVine’s principles bend, or will it remain a niche, beloved club?
Can It Really Work?
So, is this the revolution? It’s easy to be skeptical. We’ve seen reboots and “ethical” alternatives come and go. The involvement of figures like Dorsey and the parallel effort to revive Digg (with Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian) shows a clear trend of old guard founders trying to fix what they helped break. But rebuilding the *feeling* of early social media is arguably harder than building the tech. It requires a critical mass of cool, creative people all agreeing to hang out in the same new place at the same time. The beta crash proves demand is there. Sustaining it as a real community, not just a nostalgia trip, is the monumental task. Rabble’s heart and philosophy are in the right place, as seen in his activist talks. But the internet has changed. Users have changed. Making social media “great again” might be less about rebuilding the past and more about inventing a completely new future. This is a fascinating experiment, but the loop is just starting to play.
