This weekend’s devastating announcement for the fortunes of Jose “Chille” DeCastro in a post demonetization world coms as the First Amendment auditing community is coming up on the two-month anniversary of the actions by YouTube that changed the profession forever.
We say profession with no sense of wit or irony as that what it was for most in the industry surrounding the supposed movement to “hold the police and government accountable” through YouTube long form videos, shorts and community posts.
The category sprang to life during COVID, with folks who were otherwise limited in work or out of work discovering that when the public is sick of the government, with restrictions on everything from travel to how man people can gather in a church, people are going to want to see someone “stick it to the man.”
Those first pioneers targeted traffic related incidents. When those resulted into too many tickets for those involved, they’d turn into simpler subjects. The “poster 7” gotcha at post offices was big for a time, with auditors targeting post officers where they would do their best to annoy everyone under the guise of a “first amendment audit” and then using the poster as a “get out of jail free” card when police ultimately showed up to do nothing.
Education by postal officials helped, a lawsuit or two here and there more so, and eventually most post office workers were trained simply to ignore the cameras and those who would agitate for views.
The trend would slowly die, with only Glenn Cerio sticking to replaying old videos of his postal encounters as the only real example of someone clinging to the old methods for clicks and views.
Other soft targets replaced post offices, usually involving standing just off private property in order to provoke responses for clicks, views and YouTube revenue.
Churches. Dispensaries. Banks. Restaurants. West coast auditors were usually the first at trying new targets that would catch on. Silence Boy famously started both the trend of standing and filming people eating in public areas outside of restaurants and the trend of pepper spraying those who would approach too closely to his camera.
Katie Kidman and Nasty Nathanial, both part of the California crowd, once audited the windows of dentist’s office. Kidman said she had a bad experience with the dentist, so as revenge, she brought her auditing fans to film the interior of the building through its windows.
Libraries and Departments of Motor Vehicles made the rounds, as they were “public places” and auditors could freely disrupt in the name of freedom, even if it left the staff with no choice but to shut down for the day to end the disruption.
Auditors also got smarter. Knowing that police provocation could lead to easy “go away” money from both lawsuit settlements and quick supplies of cash from GoFundMe campaigns designed to help fund those lawsuits from fans outraged by “injustice.”
In one case, SeanPaul “Long Island Audit” Reyes had a GoFundMe set up to help with his arrest and had titled his livestream with the news that he was being arrested before the arrest even happened.
The lawsuit eventually filed from that apparently planned arrest eventually wrapping up to some extent years after Reyes made over $50,000.00 from his fans to help fund his defense.
Then came those who wanted to test boundaries through harassment. Both Craig Hendry and Lane Myers went to jail for openly harassing public employees. Hendry himself spending nearly the past two years in jail for auditing related activities.
A large number of auditors ignored the fact that these men were dehumanizing and abusing government workers simply because they were someone that would not do what the auditors wanted or were married to someone who was prosecuting the auditors.
Regan Benson’s 2025 arrest for and 2026 conviction of doxing a police officer only saw Colorodo strengthen the laws against “redressing your government” by exposing a government official or police officer’s home address and telling your fans to “have a pig roast” at their house.
Halo laws are now the norm and not the exception. While the original attempts at the laws were struck down for banning filming, new versions of the laws have survived court challenges because they don’t prevent filming while allowing a “safe” area for police and emergency workers to do their jobs without having to worry about interference.
Authorities in New York state began to look into SeanPaul “Long Island Audit” Reyes’s finances. According to his account, they were investigating his subscribers but many speculated that they were looking into his links to fundraising efforts in support of lawsuits that have sprung out of his various negative encounters with police.
All was not bad for the auditors. Josh “Accountability for All” Abrams still churns out videos where he can go to a small-town city hall, find an older lady and make her scream about his filming somehow being “against the law” if he didn’t have her permission to film.
A trend that had started in California made its way across America to the delight of viewers. Auditors began to verbally provoke encounters into pepper and bear spray attacks on those who got to close to them.
John “First Amendment Protection Agency” Medaglia turned one such event into a WWE style battle, complete with cutting a promo and promising that he could take his opponent’s girlfriend after police took the other man away.
Jose “Chille” DeCastro took his previous skills as a pitchman and exploited a gap in YouTube’s vertical stream placement to make money. He became the king of late-night hours long streams where his viewers would flood him with super chats in order to help him fight the police and the oppressive government.
For two months, DeCastro made over $14,000.00 from super chats alone following the discovery and his change of format.
But then August hit, nearly everyone got demonetized on YouTube and the few channels that decided to continue auditing found that Rumble, Facebook, Patreon and Instagram could not bring them the money that they previously made.
Some tried to quit and get jobs, only to find that all the criminal convictions they picked up while doing auditing related activities made it difficult to pass a background check.
Even anti-auditing channels were caught up in the sweep, two of David “Dr. Dave” Coulter’s channels were hit, a prominent Boston area gossip channel lost its demonetization, and Jonathan “Frauditor Troll” Hudon-Huneault – the biggest of all the anti-auditing pages says he quit at that time because his job was done and auditing was dead.
A second wave hit in October, demonetizing secondary channels in the process. Harvey Freebird and DeCastro’s main channels were hit by this wave.
Instead of faltering, DeCastro’s channel actually survived the hit for the first few days post demonetization as he still had a prime spot in YouTube’s shorts stream. While super chats were gone, he openly bragged about his other platforms (cashapp, PayPal, Venmo), bringing in even more money for his efforts without the “YouTube Tax” taking a slice of his revenue.
This changed on October 7, 2026.
DeCastro’s livestreams on October 6, 2026, peaked at 2,136 peak concurrent viewers and averaged 705 concurrent viewers. Down from its peak in September, but still good for a demonetized channel.
On October 7, 2026, DeCastro’s peak concurrent viewers hit 134 and his average concurrent viewers sat at 83. Since then, he has not broken 200 peak concurrent viewers or 120 average concurrent viewers for a broadcast.
While previously bragging about revenue, DeCastro has become desperate. Threatening to sue Facebook in small claims court, pivoting to creating a “new political party” and literally begging for money in order to meet the $14,000.00 he claims that he needs for payroll and rent this month.
If DeCastro, arguably the biggest of those auditing channels left in the post demonetization YouTube, is on the verge of collapse, there isn’t much hope for the First Amendment industry as a whole on social media at this time.
That has been the state of First Amendment auditing on YouTube. I’m Pants, this is ReallyCoolNews, and I’m still accepting sammich donations for the time being. I’ll return next month with our continued look at the state of auditing.
This has been a ReallyCoolNews special report.
