Amazon Blackout May 6-12, 2025
It's interesting the things you come across online when you wake up in the middle of the night. For some reason at 2:30am today, my half-conscious-but-apparently-not-tired-enough-to-sleep brain decided to search Startpage for “boycott Twitch” and discovered there is an actual Amazon boycott starting today. I took that as a sign. I'm joining the boycott. I won't be streaming on Twitch this week.
The organization behind this boycott is The People's Union USA. They've done boycotts against Amazon and other companies before. They're politically non-partisan and are seeking to unite and organize people against “corporations, the billionaire class, and the political parasites that have been feeding off our work, our wages, and our rights for far too long.”
The stated purpose of the boycott is:
[A] strategic, peaceful act of economic resistance against one of the most powerful corporations in the world.
Amazon has become the face of unchecked greed:
- Exploiting workers
- Crushing small businesses
- Profiting off surveillance and data
- Feeding a system that no longer serves the people
It's about promoting ethical business, real community, and actual freedom in the market.
This is a cause I care about, so for the next seven days I will avoid using or spending money on the websites, apps, products, and services of the following Amazon companies, subsidiaries, and brands:
- Amazon.com
- Whole Foods Market
- Amazon Fresh
- Amazon Prime Video
- Audible
- Twitch
- Ring
- Amazon Basics
- Kindle
- Amazon Music
- Goodreads
- IMDB
Will you join us? Even for a day. I believe if enough of us care and take action, we can make a difference.
(Note: I realize a good chunk of websites and online services run on AWS, but this is a consumer boycott and for practical reasons I think it makes sense that AWS wasn't included.)