Jose “Chille” DeCastro’s unfounded fears of being “shadow banned” by YouTube despite having record growth may have finally come to pass as for the second straight night, DeCastro was unable to pull in more than 200 viewers at a time to his main YouTube channel.
DeCastro was demonetized last week after his main channel missed the initial round of demonetization by the social media giant. Removing his monetization was supposed to be a punishment for the YouTuber for defying the platform’s individual creator responsibility policies, instead, DeCastro reset and rearranged on his first few livestreams since the ban.
A pro-active DeCastro met with friend Friends in Code and devised a system where he would continue to use the “super chat” name for the donations that were made from his Cash App, PayPal, Venmo and personal website donations.
He put up an on-screen timer to help give the idea of urgency to his viewers then would display the first 10 donations that came in per hour. In his first outings the setup worked as he was doing slightly lower but comparable viewing numbers in vertical format to the viewership figures he was achieving before YouTube’s punishment.
But there were problems. Previously, DeCastro’s super chats could be checked through the Playboard service to get a rough idea about his actual revenue from donations. Since he is no longer monetized, that portion of the Playboard service no longer tracks his donations.
For the first two days post demonetization, DeCastro’s donations were somewhat easy to track. He had an overlay on the screen that literally showed the first 10 for the hour. Other than a handful of times where he claimed to go over his ten-donation goal for the hour, every donation could be tracked.
For the first couple of days, DeCastro’s income when tallied – even with the limitation of missing the 11th and 12th donations of the hour – seemed comparable with what he was making from donations pre-demonetization after YouTube took its cut from those donations.
DeCastro had so much success for the first two extended shows that some speculated on our Discord server that if he maintained the pace, he could actually make more per show than he did before demonetization without YouTube taking a cut.
The on-screen overlay also showed a pattern where the countdown would pause for minutes at a time if DeCastro was nowhere close to his goal for donations for an hour. In one example, a ten second timer pause extended for several minutes until DeCastro goaded his audience into giving him enough donations to make his goal.
Critics were outraged by DeCastro apparently purposely defrauding his audience. Between using the “super chat” name to imply that the donations made were somehow protected by YouTube’s guidelines and his “problems” with the timer, DeCastro was essentially daring his critics to report his actions to YouTube.
YouTube apparently took action with his Wednesday morning by limiting the reach of his livestreams in the vertical format or “shorts” queue. DeCastro had previously switched to the vertical format as it gave him a larger exposure to a live audience on the platform in exchange for much lower revenue rates for streaming.
The result of his streaming in the vertical format saw little to no revenue for viewership on his actual streams themselves, as DeCastro would make his money off of the super chats he took in from the extended streams in vertical format.
When one stream didn’t achieve placement in the vertical stream queue to bring in donations on a level he was comfortable with, DeCastro would end his stream and restart it, hoping for better placement in the queue.
He would repeat the process until he had large enough numbers to maintain donations coming in at the rate he was comfortable with. More often than not, he would successfully manipulate YouTube’s algorithm to give him the numbers he needed to bring the donations to make the goals.
On Wednesday, DeCastro stopped and started his stream five times and was unsuccessful in breaking over 200 concurrent viewers in any of his streams. While he was mostly successful in making his financial goals for the day, he was extremely distressed about his “shadow ban” by YouTube.
Thursday saw more of the same. The failed Power Ranger stopped his first stream after an hour and 17 minutes and blamed his “shadow ban.” His restarted stream struggled to break over 100 concurrent viewers.
DeCastro’s display of his top ten donations was now covered by his own face and body, making donations harder to observe. While DeCastro wasn’t as blatant about stopping his timer in order to miraculously make his donation goals for the hour, at least on one occasion his totals would be saved by a Venmo donation that never appeared on screen.
The inventor of the jock sock’s troubles also extended to his last remaining GoFundMe, as his fund for Heather Chandler remained silent for another day.
While the market was completely silent on Wednesday, with no new donations recorded to any of the campaigns we follow, it showed some signs of life on Thursday with multiple new donations recorded.
John “First Amendment Protection Agency” Medaglia won the day with $340.00 in new donations, split between $320.00 donated to his CDS AWARENESS!! GOOD PEOPLE, FOR A GOOD CAUSE fund and $20.00 donated towards his ILLEGAL ARREST DEFENSE FUND!!! Campaign.
Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney placed second for the day with $50.00 in donations towards his legal defense fund.
No other campaigns that we follow saw new donations for the day.
