Proof Of Life: Divine Wants To Verify That Everything You Scroll Was Actually Made By A Person

by
Alisa Davidson

Revealed: Might 07, 2026 at 5:25 am Up to date: Might 07, 2026 at 5:25 am

by Victor Dey

Edited and fact-checked:
Might 07, 2026 at 5:25 am

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A brand new social media software known as Divine, developed as a reboot of the defunct Vine platform, was launched to the general public in late April 2026. Backed by Jack Dorsey’s nonprofit “and Different Stuff,” the app revives the six-second looping video format whereas positioning itself as an antidote to the more and more artificial, algorithmically degraded state of recent social media.

There’s something radical a few platform that opens with a easy promise: all the pieces right here was made by a human being. In an internet surroundings the place round 87% of entrepreneurs used generative AI in no less than one recurring workflow as of early 2026 and plenty of fast-growing YouTube channels rely solely on AI-generated media, the emergence of Divine feels much less like a nostalgia mission and extra like a thought of act of resistance. The app brings again the format that outlined a era of web creativity — Vine’s six-second looping movies — however its actual significance lies in what it refuses to accommodate.

Divine was created by Evan Henshaw-Plath, recognized on-line as Rabble, an early Twitter worker who recovered roughly 500,000 archived Vine movies from giant binary backup information, restoring consumer engagement knowledge resembling views, likes, and feedback alongside the clips themselves. The initiative was funded by Dorsey’s nonprofit, which helps experimental open-source tasks with out searching for monetary returns. For Dorsey, the enterprise represents a correction of what many think about certainly one of his extra consequential missteps: the shuttering of Vine in 2017. The app is now accessible on the App Retailer, Google Play, and the decentralised Zapstore.

The AI Slop Downside No one Needs To Title

The broader context by which Divine is launching is tough to disregard. Over 500,000 deepfakes had been shared on social media in 2023, and projected figures for 2025 reached 8 million in circulation, in keeping with aggregated business detection knowledge. In the meantime, 79% of creators report that AI allows them to provide extra content material quicker, whereas 65% depend on it for no less than half of their posts. The consequence is a feed surroundings that many customers have begun describing with the time period “AI slop” — a torrent of artificial, low-effort content material that crowds out authentic human work.

YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X are all closely intertwined with generative AI, as their mum or dad corporations search to revenue from the know-how. These platforms at the moment are grappling with a self-created dilemma: having inspired AI content material manufacturing to drive engagement and promoting income, they’re discovering it more and more tough to filter out materials that erodes the very belief that retains customers coming again. Content material recognized by audiences as AI-generated sees a 12% engagement penalty on common, suggesting that customers do discover and do care, even when platforms have been gradual to behave. Most main platforms — Instagram, YouTube, TikTok — allow AI-generated content material and depend on labelling slightly than outright exclusion, a method that focuses on disclosure slightly than prevention.

Divine’s Tougher Line

The place these broader business efforts give attention to labelling, Divine takes a tougher stance: AI content material is barred outright. The mechanism for implementing this isn’t a easy checkbox or a passive reporting system, however a technical framework. Divine requires customers to both file movies straight within the app or confirm how uploaded movies had been created utilizing C2PA, an open business commonplace that establishes the origin and the edits to digital content material. This commonplace, already adopted by organisations resembling Adobe, the BBC, and a number of other main information businesses, embeds invisible provenance knowledge into media information on the level of seize, making it verifiable slightly than self-declared.

Alongside C2PA, the platform employs what it calls “proof mode,” an open-source verification instrument developed by The Guardian Venture and utilized by human rights organisations and journalists to authenticate delicate media. If a video lacks the embedded provenance markers that affirm its authenticity, it merely can’t be uploaded. The staff has acknowledged that this locations constraints on skilled creators who depend on third-party enhancing purposes resembling CapCut — though a handful of instruments, together with Adobe Premiere, are already appropriate with the usual. The place of the platform is obvious: compatibility will develop as extra software program adopts content material verification know-how, however the core requirement won’t be relaxed.

The platform additionally deploys a multi-layered detection method to establish AI-generated content material that may in any other case slip via, and offers customers larger company over their algorithmic feeds. Fairly than counting on a single engagement-optimised advice engine of the type that drives behaviour on bigger platforms, Divine permits customers to select from a number of algorithms inside a broader ecosystem. This isn’t merely an aesthetic choice; it’s a structural resolution aimed toward lowering the motivation to chase virality on the expense of authenticity.

Constructed on the open social protocol Nostr, with potential future integration of each the AT Protocol that powers Bluesky and ActivityPub, which underpins Mastodon and Meta’s Threads, Divine is designed to forestall the type of platform lock-in that has traditionally left creators weak to coverage adjustments, algorithmic shifts, and outright shutdowns. As the corporate places it: “Your account, your feed, your viewers, your knowledge. Not locked inside another person’s platform.” The app operates as a public profit company with no promoting income mannequin, leaving monetisation to the creators themselves via direct assist, model collaborations, and a possible future Professional account tier.

Whether or not Divine can maintain itself in opposition to the dimensions of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts — the latter averaging greater than 200 billion day by day views — is a query that can’t be answered but. What it represents, although, is a coherent and technically grounded argument that social media doesn’t should be the best way it presently is. The dream of “joyscrolling as a substitute of doomscrolling,” as Henshaw-Plath has described it, is an previous one. Divine is no less than making an attempt to construct the infrastructure that may make it actual.

Alisa, a devoted journalist on the MPost, makes a speciality of crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a eager eye for rising traits and applied sciences, she delivers complete protection to tell and interact readers within the ever-evolving panorama of digital finance.

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