Would the United States be talking about police brutality as much as it is today without Vine?

It's a fair question to ask on Thursday, after Twitter announced it was ending the short-form video app.

In Ferguson, Missouri, residents gathered in communities and city streets after an officer there fatally shot a teenager named Mike Brown in August, 2014.

Protests followed, and news of the police response -- tear gas, assault rifles, armored vehicles -- soon ripped through social media, even though there was no Periscope or Facebook Live, and Snapchat was not yet a platform for news outlets.

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Demonstrators turned to Vine, and some of the most jaw-dropping and heart-warming images from Ferguson weren't images at all, but six-second videos that captured the fright, chaos, community, love and anger of the city throughout that month.

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Many first heard about the protests in Ferguson because of those videos.

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And demonstrators were keenly aware of how important it was.

I'll always love Vine b/c that was all we really had in protest in the the Fall 2014. There was no Twitter video & no Periscope back then.

— deray mckesson (@deray) October 27, 2016

We had to figure out how find the most important six seconds in protest & Vine was our only way to share it quickly.

— deray mckesson (@deray) October 27, 2016

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Vine offered first-hand, authentic video documentation of protest without the need for news crews and giant cameras. It gave demonstrators a voice that resonated beyond text.