Not going to link to the articles. Digital foundry have also been posting deals on twitter. Name and shame more scab sites here.
That's not what being a scab is. The trade union that represents Amazon workers hasn't called a boycott against Amazon.
For example, in the UK there have been many Southern Rail workers striking. The aim of this is to disrupt services, embarrass Southern Rail in the media, and draw attention to the plight of their workers.
There is
no boycott of Southern Rail, and no-one is judged for using their services or engaging in contractual obligations with them.
Exactly the same happened with McDonalds last year. There was a strike, solidarity, no boycott because it's not an effective tactic in the majority of cases.
Conversely, workers at Picturehouse cinemas have been striking for the living wage for many years. Picturehouse are union busting bastards, and illegally sacked three reps. This lead to the union calling for a boycott of the Ritzy cinema, which eventually led to a boycott of all Picturehouse cinemas. This was years after strike action had first taken place. I haven't been to a Picturehouse cinema since. However, the boycott has had no meaningful effect on achieving the worker's aims.
The fact that Polygon and DF are engaging with advertising with Amazon has absolutely nothing to do with their own struggles. Again and again- there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Boycotts, most of the time, do not work. Even the largest boycott of all, the BDS movement against Israeli imperialism, has had limited effect. Amazon is so incredibly huge that they may as well be a state themselves. They certainly exist above the regulation of any one government. This is just how capitalism is.
To abandon support for struggling workers at Polygon, especially when the Amazon workers haven't said anything similar, is anti-working class, shows a profound misunderstanding of how the trade union movement actually operates, and is essentially just a dick move.
What you need to understand is that gaming sites generally have a dedicated commerce section that is kept separate from editorial. Good press outlets keep a strong firewall between the people who write stuff and the people who make the company money, which is phenomenal, because it means people like me don't have to worry about who we're pissing off. But it also means that the same website will share items that might seem contradictory - like journalists favoring a boycott of the same company that their commerce people are promoting. Or like a giant banner ad promoting a game that the reviewers have slammed.
If you don't like it, well, convince the world to pay for news.
Yep, this exactly. What OP and others are suggesting is essentially a solidarity strike by workers at Polygon etc in order to prevent Amazon sponsored content being posted on the website. Solidarity strikes have been illegal in the UK for many, many years, so I imagine they certainly are in the USA.
People don't seem to get that the whole point of the trade union movement is having a legitimate and strong voice for workers, supported by law. It's not some crazy free for all where workers are striking illegally on a workplace by workplace basis without any coordination or strategy. In all countries where that has happened (e.g. the UK in the 70s), it's been a symptom of the declining health of the trade union movement. Even a general strike would have to be meticulously planned.
I'm not against workers taking illegal action obviously- that is always going to be necessary at times. But there are only a certain amount of times you can take action in that way, unless you want to government and the right wing press to come down heavy on the trade union movement and destroy it entirely. You've got to prioritise, stratergise, and this Polygon thing is so incredibly minor in the grand scheme of things that it seems unnecessary to take that sort of drastic action.