YouTube Reveals It Has Been a Contest All Along, Plans to Delete All Videos & Announce Winner in 2023

I encourage everybody to watch as many videos as possible before YouTube deletes everything tonight.
Antoine Dodson

In a new video titled “YouTube’s ready to select a winner,” YouTube’s competition director Tim Liston thanked everyone for participating in their 8-year-long contest to find the ‘Best Video.’ He announced that ten years from now, on April 1, 2023, the video-sharing site will return and announce the winner of the contest. At that time, the winning video will be featured on the site and nothing else.

To our incredible YouTube community,

When we started out in 2005, we focused on rapidly increasing user engagement. We wanted an inventive way to draw people in and catalyze their creativity. The result? A contest for the best video on our site.

Nearly eight years later, with 72 hours of video being uploaded every minute, we finally have enough content to close the competition. We’ve started the process to select a winner and as of tomorrow at midnight, we will be closing the site to submissions.

Watch the video below to hear from our leadership, the minds behind some of our most famous entries, and the panel of judges who will select our nominees, and ultimately, the winner for “Best Video.”

And be sure to tune in for Day 1 of our live ceremony from 9 a.m. PT, April 1, when we will begin announcing the “Best Video” nominees. This announcement will resume for 12 hours every day for the next two years.

Thank you for sharing your creativity, irreverence, ideas and knowledge with us and with viewers around the world.

Tim Liston, Competition Director, recently watched “Charlie bit my finger- again!

Rusty Blazenhoff
Rusty Blazenhoff