• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, April 14, 2017

The advertising boycott against Breitbart News is gathering steam, as online retail giant Amazon comes under growing pressure from its employees to stop advertising on the right-wing news site.

Nearly 600 Amazon employees have signed a petition addressed to the company’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, as well as to Jeff Blackburn, SVP for business development and digital entertainment, demanding that Amazon no longer advertise products on Breitbart.

The petition includes personal statements by dozens of Amazon employees, explaining their objections to Breitbart, which has been accused of inciting hatred against various groups, including publishing anti-Muslim, misogynist and racially inflammatory content.

One submission read: “I am a woman, immigrant, person of color. My employer needs to stand up to this site, which is nothing but full of hate.” Another cited typical Breitbart headlines, such as:  “There’s no hiring bias against women in tech, they just suck at interviews.”

The employee petition, which began circulating March 22, represents an escalation of the campaign against Breitbart after Blackburn appeared to dismiss employee concerns voiced at a forum in March. Blackburn said the ads weren’t placed by Amazon directly on the site, but appeared due to third-party intermediaries, such as ad exchanges.

While the employee petition is turning up the heat on Amazon’s management, the current signatories represent a small fraction of Amazon’s total headcount of 341,000 employees: 0.17% to be precise.

A separate petition, open to the general public, has accumulated over 550,000 signatures.

A number of other companies have said they are pulling ads from Breitbart, but in some cases, ads continued to appear, due to the complex nature of third-party exchanges, which make it harder for advertisers to blacklist certain sites.

In March, The New York Times reported ads from Nordstrom and BMW were still showing up on the site, after the brands said they were breaking off their relationships with it.