Jose “Chille” DeCastro’s first livestream since being demonetized featured a largely unchanged approach to his style as he revealed his “work around” YouTube’s demonetization to be new PayPal, Venmo and Cashapp accounts and an hourly onscreen timer counting down deadlines for his fans to give him “super chats.”
DeCastro was demonetized late Thursday after initially missing the first wave of YouTube’s efforts to demonetize nearly all the channels relating to first amendment auding in late August.
Speculation has been that DeCastro’s channel saved in August as it was serving a brief suspension from YouTube that was quiet quietly lifted just a day after the mass demonetization.
DeCastro’s lack of actual first amendment auditing and live confrontations with police officers may have also kept him from initially feeling the wrath of YouTube. As first amendment auditors go, DeCastro spends 95% of his video content livestream from his studio ranting at police videos and begging for super chat donations.
Since July, DeCastro made nearly $30,000.00 in super chat donations as his primary source of income. The failed Power Ranger openly admitted that YouTube regularly limited or demonetized his streams based on content and that he was making the bulk of his money from super chats and not sales of his products.
As we previously have covered, his streams featured a hard sales pitch by DeCastro for hours on end. While his sales for his products were low, his donations from super chats ranged from $400.00 to $1,500.00 per multi-hour livestream.
Much like other demonetized auditors have found, there is no real substitution for YouTube monetization. Even the “King” of all first amendment auditors, SeanPaul “Long Island Audit” Reyes, has struggled with post-demonetization over the past month.
Reyes’ has turned to Patreon for his primary source of income. After a month, he has 3,300 members to his Patreon page with 1,400 of them paying. At his basic subscription rate, he’s making $7,000.00 off of his supporters.
Patreon offers no revenue for views, so it doesn’t matter that Reyes is averaging around 100 “hearts” and 50 comments per video. None of it is bringing in money past whatever his paid memberships bring in.
His attempts at starting a Rumble account and his Facebook community have done little to add revenue to his empire. At least not at the levels that he had made pre-demonetization.
DeCastro, who is currently at war with Facebook over “being suspended every two weeks” has also already proven that one of his strengths is not making revenue off of non-YouTube communities, or even his own website to make revenue.
Knowing that, he had no high hopes for real alternatives to YouTube super chats as he proved Saturday morning with his first live stream since being demonetized.
Getting the statistics out of the way, his last live stream was on Thursday, and he earned $826 in super chats. He had over 1,900,000 views since it was released, he peaked at 2,449 concurrent viewers and the video got 1684 likes and 27 comments. The video was also age restricted.
DeCastro’s Saturday stream saw 920,000 views since it started, along with 1465 concurrent peak viewers, 1061 likes and 17 comments. The video was, of course, not eligible for monetization.
The announced “work around” for YouTube’s monetization was a scheme where DeCastro has set up a new system with Friends in Code, who is rebuilding DeCastro’s website. When DeCastro gets a donation to his PayPal, Venmo or Cashapp account, a notification appears on the screen.
It’s a system much like the systems used by other streamers using the OBS platform. A donation comes in, the message is read on screen and the streamer reacts to it. Friends in Code has yet to master the automated reading part, but that was DeCastro’s big stick it to the man moment.
That notification system worked a handful of times before it ultimately broke. DeCastro promised that the notifications would appear on screen by Sunday or they’d be replaced with StreamElements.
Also of note, as DeCastro says he has new funding accounts, he also said they’re registered to his Ethics SCS, a company that PDOCS has confirmed is suspended or revoked in both California and in Nevada. No new versions of the company exist.
The diminutive YouTuber also added a visible countdown on his screen, with a one-hour timer that encouraged his viewers to donate with a set goal of 10 “super chats” of $5.00 or more per hour.
He also directed his viewers to become a member on his website, starting at $5.00. He billed it as a social media platform, similar to what his YouVeGotBail.AI was meant to be if it had ever launched.
It’s unclear how much money DeCastro made using his “work around” for the Saturday stream, but the YouTuber ended the stream after roughly eight hours as he was visibly falling asleep on camera.
For Saturday, there were no new donations to his last GoFundMe account. John “First Amendment Protection Agency” Medaglia’s HELP MRS. FAPA AN I GET A NEW CAR!!! Fund brought in $20.00.
There were no new donations for any of the campaigns that we follow for Sunday.
We will continue to monitor DeCastro’s livestreams for more signs of his attempts to counter YouTube’s demonetization.
