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There is no defensible, fully verified top 20 in the surviving evidence for this 2014 list. A surviving copy describes a ranking of the biggest YouTube channels by subscribers and identifies Brazilian sketch-comedy group PortaDosFundos at No. 20, with about 9.29 million subscribers. But it does not provide a complete, reliably verifiable ranking or a clear measurement date. Naming the other 19 as fact would mean guessing.

That distinction matters: “biggest” could mean most subscribers, most views, or greatest cultural reach, and a channel is not always a person. The surviving list is best treated as a period artifact—and a useful window into YouTube in 2014—not as an authenticated leaderboard.

What the surviving 2014 list actually establishes

The available copy of “The 20 Biggest YouTube Stars Of 2014” says it is ranking channels by subscriber count. It places PortaDosFundos at No. 20 with approximately 9,285,173 subscribers. It describes the channel as a Brazilian comedy-sketch group founded in 2012 and notes that an English-subtitled version was available.

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Those details support a limited conclusion: PortaDosFundos was presented as one of the 20 largest channels in that list. They do not establish the other 19 entries, their order, or a precise date on which the counts were measured. The copy is a YouTube reproduction, not a clearly identified original publication with an accompanying dataset. Accordingly, this article does not fill the gaps with plausible-sounding names or present an unverified ranking as fact.

Why “biggest YouTube star” is an ambiguous label

A subscriber count is a straightforward way to compare channels, but it is not a complete measure of popularity. Subscribers may not watch every upload; total views reward large back catalogs and hit videos; and cultural influence is harder to quantify. Earnings are a separate question altogether, requiring evidence about advertising, sponsorships, merchandise, touring, and other income.

There is also a category problem. A global list of YouTube channels can include individual creators, duos and collectives, official artist accounts, labels, television brands, and other media companies. Those accounts can have enormous audiences, but they are not all “stars” in the same sense. A creator-focused ranking would need to exclude or separately label corporate and official music channels. A platform-wide ranking could include them, but should call its subjects channels rather than implying every entry is an individual.

What YouTube’s 2014 landscape looked like

The surviving list groups successful channels broadly around music, humor, and gaming. That mix reflects an era in which personality-led videos and recurring formats were becoming a visible entertainment business. Comedy sketches, gaming videos, beauty and lifestyle content, vlogs, and music all attracted large audiences, while creator status was often summarized publicly through subscriber totals.

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The PortaDosFundos entry is a reminder that the story was international as well as English-language. A Brazilian group appearing in a purported global top 20 complicates any account of early YouTube celebrity built solely around U.S. creators. At the same time, one confirmed international entry cannot establish how comprehensive or geographically balanced the full list was.

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By 2014, leading creators were also expanding beyond individual uploads into businesses and broader media careers. Books, tours, sponsorships, merchandise, television, and film could all extend a creator’s reach. Those activities help explain why subscriber counts mattered as a shorthand for audience scale, but they cannot be inferred from a channel’s rank alone.

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How to read the ranking responsibly

  • Keep it historical. Any figure belongs to a 2014 snapshot, not to a creator’s current audience.
  • Keep the metric visible. The surviving copy says subscribers; it does not establish a views or earnings ranking.
  • Keep the unit clear. A channel may represent a person, a group, an artist, or a company.
  • Treat precision cautiously. The PortaDosFundos count is reported as 9,285,173 in the copy, but the measurement date and underlying source are not documented well enough to make that precision independently reliable.
  • Do not infer the missing places. Familiar 2014-era creators may be reasonable candidates for a reconstructed list, but candidate names are not proof of their rank or subscriber totals.

A genuinely definitive top 20 would require archived subscriber counts for every channel at a specified cutoff, consistent treatment of official music and media accounts, and a rule for multiple channels owned by one creator. Without those checks, the most accurate answer is narrower than the title promises: the surviving source confirms its own claim about PortaDosFundos at No. 20, while the remaining ranking is not established.

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