Susan Wojcicki revealed early plans for the yearly video in an hour-long interview with YouTuber Alfie Deyes.
The news comes after the 2018 edition of Rewind became the most disliked video on the platform, with Susan revealing in a blog post that her own children found the video “cringey”.
“Rewind started as just a review of what some of the top moments of the year were on YouTube. I’d like us to do that and just be true to whatever the data says, whether they were good moments or bad moments, just say, ‘these were the biggest moments’,” she said.
Rewind was one of several topics discussed during the interview, with the YouTube boss also touching on issues such as mental health, child safety and harassment.
When asked about the demonetisation of videos from members from the LGBTQ+ community, Susan said “We do not automatically demonetise LGBTQ content.”
“There’s no policies [sic] that say if you put certain words in the title that will be demonetised.
“We work incredibly hard to make sure that when our machines learn something – because a lot of our decisions are made algorithmically – that our machines are fair.
“We have a whole committee, a whole process, to make sure that we are managing fairness of how our algorithms work,” she said.
When asked if demonetisation affects a video’s view count, the YouTube boss replied by saying no, adding that the monetisation and recommendation teams at Google work independently of each other.
On the topic of family channels having their comments turned off, Susan admitted that “it wasn’t an easy decision”, but added that “we need to make sure that we are always protecting kids.”
“We realised that when we had this choice between child safety and freedom of expression and freedom to belong, that we had to put child safety at the highest level – even if that meant that videos involving kids do not have the same freedom of expression in them,” she said.
Elsewhere, the two discussed taking a break from uploading content on YouTube, with Susan saying it was a “great area to look into and publish more data” on for creators “so they really understand” the impact on their channel if they decide to leave the platform for a short period.
The interview was filmed on 26 July, to coincide with Alfie’s 10-year anniversary of being on YouTube.
Want more?
Read about research that reveals over half of YouTubers have faced copyright claims, or find out more about creators making use of Instagram’s new donate feature.
For updates follow @TenEightyUK on Twitter or like TenEighty UK on Facebook.
