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How YouTube's Year-In-Review 'Rewind' Video Set Off a Civil War (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: You might guess that a surefire way to make a hit video on YouTube would be to gather a bunch of YouTube megastars, film them riffing on some of the year's most popular YouTube themes and release it as a year-in-review spectacular. You would be wrong. YouTube tested that theory this week, releasing its annual "YouTube Rewind" year-end retrospective. The eight-minute video was a jam-packed montage of YouTube meta-humor, featuring a who's-who of YouTube stars along with conventional celebrities. The video was slickly produced and wholesome, with lots of references to the popular video game Fortnite, shout-outs to popular video formats, and earnest paeans to YouTube's diversity and inclusiveness. It was meant to be a feel-good celebration of a year's worth of YouTube creativity, but the video started a firestorm, and led to a mass-downvoting campaign that became a meme of its own. Within 48 hours, the video had been "disliked" more than four million times. On Thursday, it became the most-disliked video in the history of the website, gathering more than 10 million dislikes and beating out the previous record-holder, the music video for Justin Bieber's "Baby."
The issue that upset so many YouTube fans, it turns out, was what the Rewind video did not show. Many of the most notable YouTube moments of the year -- such as the August boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, two YouTube stars who fought in a highly publicized spectacle watched by millions -- went unmentioned. And some prominent YouTubers were absent, including Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. "PewDiePie," one of the most popular creators in YouTube's history, who had appeared in the Rewind videos as recently as 2016. Some YouTubers enjoyed the video. But to many, it felt like evidence that YouTube the company was snubbing YouTube the community by featuring mainstream celebrities in addition to the platform's homegrown creators, and by glossing over major moments in favor of advertiser-friendly scenes. The Times says the Rewind controversy "is indicative of a larger issue at YouTube, which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool, inclusive creativity while being accused of radicalizing a generation of young people by pushing them toward increasingly extreme content, and allowing reactionary cranks and conspiracy theorists to dominate its platform."
"But people like Mr. Kjellberg and Mr. Paul -- stars who rose to prominence through YouTube, and still garner tens of millions of views every month -- remain in a kind of dysfunctional relationship with the platform. YouTube doesn't want to endorse their behavior in its official promotions, but it doesn't want to alienate their large, passionate audiences, either," reports the NYT. "And since no other platform can rival the large audiences and earning potential YouTube gives these creators, they are stuck in a kind of unhappy purgatory -- making aggrieved videos about how badly YouTube has wronged them, while also tiptoeing to avoid crossing any lines that might get them barred, or prevent them from making money from their videos." This tension is at the heart of the controversy over YouTube Rewind.
"A YouTube recap that includes only displays of tolerance and pluralism is a little like a Weather Channel highlight reel featuring only footage of sunny days -- it might be more pleasant to look at, but it doesn't reflect the actual weather..."
The issue that upset so many YouTube fans, it turns out, was what the Rewind video did not show. Many of the most notable YouTube moments of the year -- such as the August boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, two YouTube stars who fought in a highly publicized spectacle watched by millions -- went unmentioned. And some prominent YouTubers were absent, including Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. "PewDiePie," one of the most popular creators in YouTube's history, who had appeared in the Rewind videos as recently as 2016. Some YouTubers enjoyed the video. But to many, it felt like evidence that YouTube the company was snubbing YouTube the community by featuring mainstream celebrities in addition to the platform's homegrown creators, and by glossing over major moments in favor of advertiser-friendly scenes. The Times says the Rewind controversy "is indicative of a larger issue at YouTube, which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool, inclusive creativity while being accused of radicalizing a generation of young people by pushing them toward increasingly extreme content, and allowing reactionary cranks and conspiracy theorists to dominate its platform."
"But people like Mr. Kjellberg and Mr. Paul -- stars who rose to prominence through YouTube, and still garner tens of millions of views every month -- remain in a kind of dysfunctional relationship with the platform. YouTube doesn't want to endorse their behavior in its official promotions, but it doesn't want to alienate their large, passionate audiences, either," reports the NYT. "And since no other platform can rival the large audiences and earning potential YouTube gives these creators, they are stuck in a kind of unhappy purgatory -- making aggrieved videos about how badly YouTube has wronged them, while also tiptoeing to avoid crossing any lines that might get them barred, or prevent them from making money from their videos." This tension is at the heart of the controversy over YouTube Rewind.
"A YouTube recap that includes only displays of tolerance and pluralism is a little like a Weather Channel highlight reel featuring only footage of sunny days -- it might be more pleasant to look at, but it doesn't reflect the actual weather..."
Americans don't understand anything else, War on drugs, war on terror, war war war.
Shame they don't understand what winning is anymore
We represent maximum diversity and culture.
It sucked because there was no actual youtube talent. Where's EEVBlog, Mikeselectricstuff, AvE, Electroboom, Big Clive, This old Tony, Numberphile, Space Time.
If there were an alternative, people would be leaving after all the shit Youtube has pulled. People are not leaving. They're "punishing" Youtube with unprecedented amounts of attention. Youtube has won.
People don't like knowingly being told what is cool and what isn't. I mean when it's a friend or even a complete stranger saying "check this out, it's cool", that's all well and good (provided it actually is, and not a rickroll). A friend knows your tastes to some degree. A stranger can assume some things about you by where you are and how you're dressed and such. YouTube can't do any of these things, because they're only making one video, aimed at billions of people.
And that would be a best case scenario, where YouTube really does just want to promote what's cool. However, it is incredibly obvious that what they really want to promote is advertiser-friendly content, much of which is quite good, while silently glossing over the parts they don't like. Unfortunately for them, the parts they don't like are the parts their various viewing populations do like. This is why television could only be cool in small batches, the world is simply too big to all have the same tastes.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Interesting how the summary doesn't mention (though the article does) that both Logan & PewDiePie have been mired in controvesy for a few years. Hardly surprising that Youtube wasn't interested in showcasing them.
Of course youtube won't include all the actually trending things - it's all advertiser UNFRIENDLY.
And I sort of get that tbh.
They don't want to be promoting people who pay ignorant indian peasants to say "death to all jews", drops the N Bomb and links to other bigoted youtubers.
IMAGINE THAT!
Still an awful video though.
A bunch of kids downvoting a video to be trolls is not a 'civil war'. This is firmly "things that don't matter to anybody".
A dose of perspective would be healthy.
It was meant to be a feel-good celebration of a year's worth of YouTube creativity
How can that be true when it doesn't feature most of the CREATORS that make YouTube so popular?
A parade of B-List celebs doing Fortnite dances is not a "celebration of creativity".
I don't really follow YouTube much at all, but this seemed like a big tone-deaf misstep on the part of YouTube that is trying to pretend like some people do not exist. Absurd. Celebrate what you are, all of it, or say nothing at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just a reminder, one of the most influential cartoonist doesn't even use YouTube. And Google has a vendetta against him, I don't see them winning this war. Google won't know what hit them when Scott Adams is through with 'em.
Half of all viewers end up moving to Wakanda.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Nobody cares. Not even their immediate family cares. The most-viewed videos of 2018 were all music videos of bad records. You could literally show videos of goats being hypnotized instead of every single "YouTube Star" and YouTube would make just as much money. If you can name five of these YouTube Stars you should be ashamed of being such a giant loser.
Get over yourselves. Pewdiepie spouting racist shit isn't that interesting and the people that watch him don't buy shit anyway. Advertisers are starting to realize they're better off targeting their parents. The only good YouTube videos are the ones that show you how to de-bone a chicken or unclog a toilet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
was backlash from youtube removing downvotes.
All these words and all The Times can come up with is people are downvoting because they fear YouTube for the same reason The Times does, because YouTubers get more views than them and present alternative viewpoints? That's it? That's the best their intellects could come up with? How parochial, narrow-minded and most of all self-serving. It's because the video was widely perceived as nodding to SJWs, the plague of our age. Weird that never occurred to them as a possibility when it's right in front of your face.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Reality is not feel-good.
Besides, murder porn is somewol alright. But do not dare showing the actual suffering and consequences. Just a "cool" shot through the head.
The problem is the concept of paying what you use, by letting a few criminals, yes, criminals, lie to you, for the purpose of defrauding you.
Why would you do that?
Go to a price/product comparison size, if you need something.
Look at what YT gets for your view of an ad. It's not even fractions of a cent. You could easily have no ads for a month, for the price of a single candy bar.
What we need, is a decentralized servce with request-based micropayment (similar to HTTP auth) and a brower-based client for backwards compatibility.
There's no other word for it, and it's why people found this so repellent.
Let's not forget that it took bieber what, 9 years to get to that many dislikes, this virtue-signaling shitshow got there in a week?
-Styopa
If you're upset about what Youtube said were the most popular videos of the year, then you really need to get a fucking life. It's just stupid fucking entertainment.
I don't respond to AC's.
Not even the ones you claim are 'ours'.
Nobody cares about the Paul brothers. PewDiePie makes videos for children.
If anything, this just shows how Youtube secretly wants to be daytime television in the US - full of low quality normalised emo-junk that lets them print endless ad revenue while being bland enough to avoid criticism.
I kinda think that people would still be watching TV if that's what they wanted.
Am I the only not understanding anything at all? Who are the YouTube âzstarsâoe being discussed? Am I really so old that I did only recognize Will Smith and got a headache with the video?
Inclusion has become code for exclusion. It’s a bit like saying direct action when what someone really means is violence. Inclusion is simply another way of saying progressive or politically correct. As has been shown time and again these values are very exclusionary.
It also means that the winners will be determined based on their politics, gender and skin tone. No consideration will be given to merit. Why bother watching when you can predict the results based on whether or not they support progressive values?
Conservative, anti-abortion, white, male, Christian, straight? All of these things are grounds to exclude you. Especially if you belong to a group that is supposed to be progressive. Black and conservative? Progressive but anti-abortion? Your life will be ruined and you will be treated as a traitor.
People are seeing through the charade that is political correctness. Political correctness is nothing more than fascism with good manners. The intolerance of the politically correct is becoming known by the masses.
you tards should stop posting NYT articles, that rag is just gossip junk fake news
I mean that literally. Other than TV salesmen who cares?
When it's time to buy a new TV I go to the TV store and buy something that have in stock that fits my budget.
I don't care if it's plasma powered, LED powered, or fairy dust powered. A TV is a TV is a TV.
This is one of those rare occasions where i almost agree with the plastic man.
They could have included some actual youtube broadcasters instead of b-list North American celebs.
TBH Pewds and the Paul brothers can go away with their whiny demands for attention (especially like this - fkn fake ass grassrootsers), but there were some people who could probably have been in it that weren't and some who were in it that i'm not at all sure why they were.
anything they touch turns to shit.
https://qmap.pub/players/read/...
https://qmap.pub/players/read/...
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Fortnite, PewDiePie, Hollywood celebs... I don't give a shit about any of it to tell you the truth. I don't even care enough to open up and down vote it... That'll put bullshit in my recommendations.
The real travesty here is not what they left out of the video... It's that the alt-celeb internet culture is as useless as the traditional one. It's that there is a market, and marketers, for this video to even be conceived.
Add youtube to my list of internet s**t that's not just no longer worth my time but is actually intellectually poisonous. Because that's what celebrity is. Here's the list so far:
facebook
twitter
cnn
Anything TMZ-ish
yet they got your country a president elected that should never have been involved in politics to begin with. you 'murkins are dumber than a box of rocks and deserve what you get. a-fucking-men.
The weirdos who started BSD once had one kernel. Then they kept fighting with each other until it was split between a half-dozen incompatible kernels. But of all the fragments, I'd say NetBSD is the worst. It is so far behind the times that it will never catch up. Some subsystems are sort of current, others are ancient and full of bit rot. And really, the number of real users of NetBSD can be counted as maybe 100 or 200 max. Bad shit, amigo. Bad shit.
I watch YouTube all the time and have no interest in the people in this rewind thing because I am an old fart. :D :D https://www.youtube.com/channe...
My favorite channel at the moment are a about a guy sailing up and down the canals in England in his narrowboat. Very relaxing.
"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too"
But my point is that there's plenty of stuff on YouTube that seems to (thankfully?) be off the hype radar and lives it own quiet happy life. A lot of people my age don't seem to know that, maybe because they are not logged in to google/YouTube when they get the front page. I tried that once, it's awful.
Cheers.
L'Idiot
Does Youtube even care? Why should they? The video has 138 million views in 10 days. Mission accomplished.
Better known as 318230.
YouTube needs to make custom Rewind videos based on data collected on customers by YouTube and Google. AI should be trained to on the fly generate video most likely be liked by the viewer. If the viewer wants to see conflict, show conflict. If the viewer wants to see a 100% PC world, show them that. There is never a way to please everybody, unless you customize what you give each person, or at least a group.
Paul and PewDiePie earned their ostracism fair and square. Maybe if they started acting like people, they'd gain an audience outside basement-dwellers, sockpuppets, and dead accounts.
Many of the most notable YouTube moments of the year -- such as the August boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, two YouTube stars who fought in a highly publicized spectacle watched by millions -- went unmentioned.
Never talk about Fight Club.
which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool
NERF BASTION!!!
The University of YouTube is a great place to learn things
I watch graduate level physics lectures from top professors
I also watch glassblowing, welding, knifemaking, woodworking, surgery, engineering and business analysis
Even some of the "commercials" are educational. I learned a lit about mining by watching Caterpillar promotional videos
Of course, I sometimes goof off and watch mindless stuff like dead malls
Truly, it is really that bad, they poured huge amounts of money into it and they've got something simply unwatchable, i've seen (or tried to see it) on the first day, before any of those news about it being the must disliked video on the site, or the analysis said that so and so are missing and some other random guy that only stream on twitch is there, and I still could get to half of it.
The video is the most disliked because it was pushed to everybody that visits the site and it was writen by a committee that has no idea of what it is doing.
That Logan Paul in on you tube. I'd been hearing that name some.
Aren't you the same "Luckyo" faggot that said microplastics couldn't possibly hurt human health because "they're inert" and dumb shit like that? https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12642660&cid=57354060
You have zero credibility faggot.
I only recognized one person there, the girl who makes shitty robots and I'm not subscribed to her because her robots aren't just shitty, they're stupid. Here's a partial list of my history today: Scotty Kilmer, TMM, BBC Earth, This Old Tony, PZ Myers, Logos By Nick, StarTalk, MIT OpenCourseWare, TED, GreatScott!, iBiology, Dalibor Farný
This was the year Slashdot ignored Q Anon for the entire year.
wtg
I read and reread the summary and article and am still having trouble figuring out which recent civil war is being attributed to YouTube. All I can see is lots of bitching about which wannabe celebrity was or wasn't included in some video. Tell me more about the headline, which is what brought me to the article, dipshits.
Logan Paul and PewDiePie made their choice
I can sort of understand leaving out Pew as punishment for gaffes (he''s not actually racist though, try not to spread lies m'kay?).
But there are a world of other very popular creators on YouTube, as as I said it had none of them. It was not a reflection of YouTube, or what people saw through the years. I don't even have a beef with sugar-coating it and presenting only nice moments... just don't make things up that do not reflect the YouTube people know and use through the year.
They would have been better off just having the crazy Russian dude make stuff that science every day guy could explain as it exploded.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't have anything more to say.
Who? That Dilbert guy that went full SJW and pro-Trump at the same time?
Because Douglas is dead.
And Fester has not been seen for a long time.
The only good YouTube videos are the ones that show you how to de-bone a chicken or unclog a toilet.
Also de-boning a toilet and unclogging a chicken.
All their bullshit is designed to keep people divided by race when they should be uniting by class. From people who would all be neoliberal and/or neoconservative Republicans, in a universe where the Southern Strategy wasn't a thing.
Take a step back and find out just why people downvoted it. There's got to be a reason. And no, it's not that "all the alt-rights that felt slighted" did it. Sorry, no. I'm far from alt-right. Even though I still don't get what's "alt" about it, unless you're German (where "alt" means "old") this doesn't make sense, it's the same old assholes they always were, there's nothing alt about it. Yes, they downvoted it too, maybe for that reason, but you think that's all? I doubt it. I'm pretty sure with this video, they managed to piss off the left too. Maybe even more than it could piss off the right.
Take a look at what is celebrated in this "rewind": Blatant fucking consumerism. The "celebrities" in this video were (and I know this now that I spent quite a bit of time trying hard to figure out who these bozos actually are) vloggers that basically do nothing but peddle some wares they get paid to endorse, "beauty tip" channels that either promote some goods they get paid to promote, promote their own line of good or both and people who do crazy shit like sitting in a bathtub of sugary breakfast hazelnut cream (sponsored by Nutella) or do otherwise completely useless, random and weird shit that is probably interesting if you're 10-13 years old and not too interested in anything that could potentially actually show or teach you something. Add some random endorsement of a game that apparently EVERYONE but me plays and you're basically done with the whole review video.
In other words: YouTube apparently assumes that its average viewer is some teenager with too much time and not enough brain to identify blatant advertising, mistake it as content and mistake the overpaid "celebs" that peddle that crap as "friends".
And guess what: People who don't fall into this demographic (read: About 11 millions so far) get pissed at this.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's a real shame that PewDiePie hasn't attracted any really serious interest from criminal types yet. Surely he's famous enough to generate a short kidnapping and ransom demand at the very least?
I'm not suggesting that the trauma of losing an ear or similar would benefit him in any way, but it would provide a valuable lesson to all of the printer hacking little shitcocks that follow him on the Youtubes. "Hello Children, welcome to the real world", is what it would say. And just for once, that message would be received loud and clear.
What I missed in rewind was not bigots or any hateful videos.
I missed the VLOGS, travel videos, city walkthroughs, cooking videos, comedy videos (mediocre films anyone?), gameplay videos even.
Why are these not mentioned in this article, and why were they excluded too?
Getting fed up of Rewind.
Mediocre films, Jack Vale, Gabriel Traveller, Tom Hall, The Way Away, Indigo Traveller, Wolter's World, Howard Bloom, TED, Schadenfreude Industries, Yellow Productions
The loudest thing on YouTube is Google's commercials. And it's not like it's an accident either, because there is no audio distortion characteristic of clipping. They deliberately engineered their commercials to be as loud as possible. It's not a new tactic, but it is a desperate little bitch move.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
did you, for yourself, enjoy the rewind video or not?
yes, good for you. if not, well, too bad.
who cares about how many downvotes a video gets?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Hahahahahahaha
PewDiePies most recent fundraiser for Indian children raised like £200k
Is this the behaviour they wish to discourage?
Or is it the fact that he somehow delivers more unbiased as better sourced news than any mainstream source on YouTube?
The world is turning upside down.
It's just the outrage culture at work. In normal times, it would have been just another a cheesy promotional video to ignore. Nowadays, it has to be OMFG THE WORST VIDEO EVER MADE LOL (SUPREME) (100 POINTS). And about it there have to be newspaper articles, slashdot stories, sociologist analyses, youtuber rants, facebook pages, talk shows on tv, ...
... most the trending stuff is trolling clickbait anyway, it looks like youtube is trolling the video trolls and getting trolled by the click trolls, this whole article is just trollish clickbait in the old school meaning of trolling.
Every time someone goes all angry man about SJW thinking it is an insult, it's obvious they've just been trolled themselves.
Just think for a moment what is the opposite of an SJW ...
An anti-social criminal coward
It's like kicking babies, just too easy.
I thought based on the description of the article that an actual civil war had broken out somewhere, but after reading so far you realize the author was just sensationalizing something far more trivial. A far more accurate title would be "Large company manipulates its media to try and conform to some ideological model created by a focus group and revised by stuffy corporate executives out of fear of hurting the company's reputation and profits". Well maybe that's a bit long, and likely not as many people would read it.
The real highlights of YouTube this year. It should of included Logan Paul and the dead body, the You Tube shooter, a highlight of all the de-platformed users, and a run down of why Pew De Pie is a Nazi alt right transphobic islamaphobic non-person. But instead they made it about celebrities, the very group that YT content creators compete against.
It's about Google/youtube having a long tern sustainable business model and revenue stream.
Google and Youtube are well into or past the slow growth phase of advertising revenue and are now chasing a smaller pie to increase revenue.
Go out 10 years and there's not much room for growth in Europe, NA, Japan, NZ and Australia. It's analysts about to ask the question, where's the long term top-line revenue growth? Google can cut costs for a while but top-line revenue will slow and, significantly when combined with the EU considering a top line revenue tax in the EU, will have increasingly difficult times.
Top line revenue tax inside the EU borders will significantly affect Google and other internet companies.
Expect Google to notch back its advertising paid to sites soon, effectively shutting down million of web sites.
Advertising industry wanted better tracking of advertising effectiveness for decades and 20 years into the internet age doesn't like the numbers showing that eyeball views does not work.
yuppers
Not into all those celebritries and stuff, must have been too many 'in jokes' or something, I only got halfway thru it also.
Two differences:
1. "Civil war" contains fewer words banned for broadcast by the US Federal Communications Commission than "pissing match".
2. For a proper "civil war", you'll need more hoop skirts. Perhaps a #MeToo-leaning fashion magazine can help bring them back in style by calling them "personal space skirts".