Boycott Twitch: The Twitch boycott, explained
At the end of February, a grassroots political movement asked consumers to stop spending at giant corporations in an attempt to advocate against corporate greed. Now, the organizer of that event wants to boycott Amazon for an entire week, as well as all Amazon subsidiaries, including the gaming streaming site Twitch.
The group behind the boycott is the People’s Union USA, founded by Chicago father, John Schwarz. “Any type of drop in sales would be a success to us,” he told CNET recently. Also, he doesn’t love the word “boycott”; instead, he describes the movement as a “calculated strike” against how Amazon treats its workers and how it’s affected small businesses.
The Feb. 28 blackout was widely shared on social media, with celebrities like Mark Ruffalo and Bette Midler also jumping on board. However, it didn’t necessarily affect Amazon, as its revenues actually went up 1% that day. Considering the company made $638 billion in net sales last year, that’s not necessarily surprising.
People’s Union USA says it’s “not a political party” but a “protest.” We are a movement of people, organizing to take back control of our economy, government, and future of our country,” the movement said on its website.
Someone wanting to participate in the Amazon boycott will have to do some work because Amazon has its hands in many different pots. These include Alexa, IMDb, Prime Video, Zappos, Whole Foods, and even Ring doorbell cameras. The idea that people will do all this work to impact Amazon, while unrealistic, is at least happening.
That being said, Twitch is sort of being dragged into this whole thing by default. When people think of corporate greed, a streaming service to watch people play games is not usually at the top of the list. Not that it hasn’t happened before, albeit for much different reasons.
Back in August of 2021, Twitch streamers stepped away from the platform for a day to protest against how some marginalized communities were being treated. Specifically, the protest was against “hate raids,” where people flood a stream with bad language and slurs.
This was actually a successful protest, as Twitch improved auto-moderation and changed the requirements for new account creation. Whether or not streamers will get on board with the boycott over Amazon remains to be seen.
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