‘It doesn’t feel right to carry on’: YouTube Rewind has been cancelled for 2020

“But 2020 has been different. And it doesn’t feel right to carry on as if it weren’t. So, we’re taking a break from rewind this year.”

The tweet doesn’t mention if they’ll return with a 2021 edition of the video, although it seems likely that they will, considering they refer to 2020 as a “break”.

The YouTube Rewind series of videos have come under fire in the past for not celebrating YouTube culture properly, instead featuring creators who are commercially successful in mainstream media rather than popular creators who have drawn criticism such as Pewdiepie.

Their 2018 edition of the series to become the most disliked YouTube video ever for excluding native creators who had built large followings on the platform but featuring people like Ninja and Will Smith who were already successful on other platforms.

The video currently has 18 million dislikes and a touch under three million likes, whilst their 2019 version has drawn similar criticism for not representing the community well enough – it has over nine million dislikes.

Whilst the future of Rewind looked somewhat uncertain from 2018, in their statement, YouTube also stressed that their creators had worked to uplift viewers through such a difficult time: “We know that so much of the good that did happen in 2020 was created by all of you. You’ve found ways to lift people up, help them cope, and make them laugh. You made a hard year genuinely better.

“Thank you for making a difference.”