YouTubeYouTube has mysteriously unlisted all of its iconic YouTube Rewind videos just after Ryan ‘NigaHiga’ Higa revealed he quit participating in them after being “lied to.”
End-of-year recaps are all the rage for social media platforms now. Spotify Wrapped’s release day is something every user looks forward to, while YouTube has finally added it’s own personalized recap for users.
The Google-owned platform did, however, set the bar with it’s end-of-year YouTube Rewind videos. Those videos, which ran from 2011 to 2019, used to bring together some of YouTube’s biggest names to celebrate memes, big highlights, and everything else in between.
Rewind was last made back in 2019, with For the Record. This was roundly criticized by fans and quickly became one of the most-disliked videos on YouTube ever, amassing over 3 million dislikes in the first 24 hours.
YouTube Rewind uploads unlisted in 2025
Despite Rewind being scrapped, the videos had remained publicly available for everyone to watch. Well, that was until December 9, 2025, as all of the Rewind compilations had been unlisted out of the blue.
It was picked up by members of the r/YouTube subreddit, who noted that the videos had also been removed from their ‘Watch Later’ playlists.
Some users have compiled them into a separate playlist, meaning that they are still watchable. Though, you will need the specific video links to view them.
The move to unlist the videos has sparked a number of theories from YouTube users, questioning the timing of it all.
It does come after Ryan ‘NigaHiga’ Higa put the platform on blast for apparently lying to him over his role in previous Rewinds.
“I was straight up lied to and they tried to like convince me, once I was there, that it would be easy, but I was like, nah, I’m good,” the YouTube icon said on his Twitch stream.
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“If you specifically negotiate and say I’m not doing this thing and they try to get you to do that thing, thats scummy, and I will never forget that,” he added. “That pissed me off because I was already doing it for free. Ever since then, I was not a fan of YouTube Rewind.”