Facepalm: Perhaps the one deeming quality of the 2019 Rewind is the fact that YouTube owned up to last year's blunder and didn't try to sweep it under the rug or act like it never happened.
YouTube on Thursday published its annual Rewind, a compilation meant to highlight the top trends, videos and personalities that emerged on the platform over the past year. Usually a fun trip down memory lane, last year's effort was a total flop. In fact, it quickly became the most disliked video on YouTube and maintains that position today with more than 17 million dislikes and counting.
Rather than run the risk of another disastrous effort, YouTube this time around played it safe by relying strictly on statistics to populate Rewind.
That's right, instead of bringing together the year's top viral stars to produce something original, YouTube Rewind is now just a "top" list. What a cop-out.
From the top, Rewind 2019 highlights the most liked creator videos, the most liked music videos, the most liked dance videos, the most viewed video games, the most liked beauty videos and the top breakout creators. It concludes with a random assortment of best / first creators in various categories.
So, has YouTube redeemed itself this year? Based on early feedback from viewers, not really. As of writing, the number of dislikes outweigh the number of likes by about 48,000. By comparison, the 2014 edition of Rewind has 1.5 million likes and just 78,000 dislikes.