Friday, December 7, 2018

Content creators and fans lash out at YouTube’s ‘Rewind’

As 2018 comes to a close, many social media platforms and companies are celebrating the past years’ highlights—including YouTube.

However, the platform is under fire for a yearly overview that many say doesn’t represent the large portion of content and engagement on YouTube.

Geek.com reported:

Every year, YouTube recaps the highlights of the year with a Rewind video, which features the biggest moments and memes as presented by the most popular YouTube creators. The 2018 video, which was released Thursday and is the longest Rewind to date, opens with an appearance by Will Smith (recreating birthday Grand Canyon video), and features celebrity appearances by John Oliver, Trevor Noah and Olympic skater Adam Rippon.

Adweek reported:

Last year’s clip was viewed more than 200 million times, and the newest installment, created again by digital content studio Portal A, is off to a tire-squealing start with nearly 5 million views in its first two hours.

While the Google-owned video platform’s recap is always a bit of a cameo cacophony, there’s typically a theme that runs as a thread through the whole thing. This time around, online gaming mega-sensation Fortnite provides the backdrop, with content creators dropping into a jungle setting via the game’s preferred form of group transit: a school bus hot air balloon.

[RELATED: Earn recognition for your captivating videos and visual designs.]

In a blog post, YouTube wrote:

Emerging and well-known YouTube stars also showed up in a big way in the year's "Top Trending Videos" list. Liza and David shared the news of their breakup through tears and laughter, the guys from Dude Perfect somehow perfectly tossed bread into a toaster, and AsapSCIENCE once again solved the Internet’s latest mystery. (Seriously, is it "Yanny" or "Laurel"?) India comedy sensation Amit Bhadana amassed an astounding 11 million subscribers in just one year and Lâm Chấn Khang's two-hour musical comedy set in the criminal underworld amassed more than 60 million views.

… It's also time for our annual Rewind mashup video. But rather than trying to sum up 2018's biggest memes, personalities, and hit videos ourselves, we tried something different this time around. We asked some of YouTube's biggest names to tell us what they wanted to see if they controlled Rewind.

However, YouTube creators and fans were quick to criticize the platform’s roundup, saying it was a disingenuous look at the popular events and trends that shaped the platform in 2018.

Tech2 reported:

… [W]hen you think of this year's trends what would you list in?

The nail-biting race between PewDiePie and T-Series to see who got the top spot, the split of the famous duo David Dobrik and Liza Koshy, Childish Gambino's This is America and the many versions of that, the owners of DaddyOFive channel losing custody of their kids, and maybe Logan Paul's infamous video and the aftermath at Aokigahara forest in Japan, or even the slime addiction, among other things! But none of these show up in YouTube Rewind 2018.

… YouTube Rewind 2018 has played safe with only the creators that have kept out of any sort of controversies this year while missing out on a lot of people and things viewers actually talked about this year.

The Verge reported:

… [YouTube Rewind is] a presentation of what makes YouTube unique, specifically designed to market its creators to advertisers in the hopes of securing large deals. The lack of these moments reiterates the divide between how the platform wants to be seen and the actual culture that creators participate in.

This year, those people include actors like Will Smith and comedians like Jon Oliver. It includes mainstream stars like Fortnite’s Ninja, and some of YouTube’s most notable creators who have worked in traditional Hollywood — Casey Neistat, Lilly Singh, and Liza Koshy. These creators are beloved and influential, but most importantly, they’re not controversial. They work with big brands and big celebrities, and they represent the switch to a digital MTV that YouTube is trying to become.

In 2017, Disney dropped YouTube vlogger Felix Kjellberg, known as “PewDiePie,” from its collection of YouTube channels called Maker Studios. The decision came after a backlash over anti-Semitic content. Even after Kjellberg apologized, YouTube didn’t invite the influencer to be a part of its Rewind video in 2017 or 2018. The decision is an especially strong stance, considering Kjellberg is the No. 1 YouTuber, with more than 74.8 million subscribers.

In January, YouTube received backlash after vlogger Logan Paul published a video in which he reacted to a dead body found in Japan’s Aokigahara forest. Paul was not included in YouTube’s end-of-the-year video, either.

At time of publication, the video has a staggering 2.2 million dislikes—more than double the 1 million likes it’s garnered. The compilation has also earned it a spot on the list of the top 20 most-hated YouTube videos:

Twitter users were quick to criticize YouTube for skipping popular trends and vloggers in favor of a more polished year in review:

Though YouTube said its content creators “controlled” the direction of its roundup, the platform’s community largely—and vehemently—disagrees. However, the move is ultimately meant to court marketing partners looking to avoid controversy and influencers who might represent larger risks than a brand wants to take.

The Verge reported:

The message from YouTube to marketers was clear: these are the people you want to invest time to watch and whose videos you should run ads on.

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