It seems that Youtube Rewind 2018 was a failure as soon as it was uploaded. Decisions over the number and type of content creators YouTube sought to include in Rewind 2018 to be more about how what YouTubers want advertisers to think about the YouTube community than the YouTube community itself. YouTube Rewind 2018 can be praised for the unprecedented diversity it showed. From the outset, YouTube Rewind 2018 was criticized for the creators the video excluded. Why YouTube Rewind 2018 was so disliked by its own community was that it focused more on its advertisers than its community.

Source: Forbes December 10, 2018 21:11 UTC