“I Am My Own Bot”: Everyday Resistance in Online Fashion Resale

Paper Title

“I Am My Own Bot”: Everyday Resistance in Online Fashion Resale

Publication Info

• Topic area: Online fashion resale and platform labor resistance.
• Keywords: Poshmark, platform labor, everyday resistance, gig work, automation, reselling, algorithmic governance, feminist political economy, platformic torque, sociotechnical systems.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Online fashion resellers face significant pressures from algorithmically governed platforms like Poshmark, which demand unpaid, repetitive labor for visibility while prohibiting automation tools that could alleviate these burdens. Prior research has largely overlooked this form of gig work and its resistance dynamics.
• Significance: Understanding how resellers navigate and resist these constraints is crucial for addressing the broader implications of platform labor, particularly its intersection with gender, race, and class in the U.S. context.
• Motivation and related work: Previous studies have examined gig work in ridesharing and delivery but have paid less attention to secondhand marketplaces. Research on platforms like Poshmark has focused on control mechanisms rather than the everyday resistance tactics of resellers. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how resellers resist platformic torque and reconfigure their labor.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The study uses a four-year digital ethnography to analyze how U.S.-based Poshmark resellers engage in everyday resistance through worker-led automation and sociotechnical patchwork.
• Novelty:
  1. Extends understanding of reselling as platform labor by highlighting aesthetic, temporal, and regulatory pressures on resellers.
  2. Frames worker-led automation and sociotechnical patchworks as forms of everyday resistance, reinterpreting practices like bot use and cross-posting as ambivalent tactics for reclaiming agency.
  3. Recasts practices often labeled as “gaming the system” as acts of reciprocity and resistance against platform governance.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted participant observation, surveys, semi-structured interviews, and autoethnography.
  • Analyzed reseller strategies like automation, cross-listing, and reciprocal metric inflation.
  • Examined intersectional dynamics of resistance, focusing on gendered, racialized, and class-based pressures.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • 67% of part-time and all full-time resellers interviewed use automation tools despite platform prohibitions.
  • Practices like reciprocal metric inflation (e.g., “share trains”) and cross-listing tools reduce unpaid labor but introduce new forms of work.
  • Algorithmic changes (e.g., Poshmark’s 2023 sorting update) disrupt reseller strategies, prompting adaptive resistance.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Worker-led automation and patchwork tactics allow resellers to reclaim time and redistribute labor, challenging Poshmark’s extractive engagement model.
  • These tactics expose the platform’s reliance on unpaid, feminized labor while highlighting the limits of its governance mechanisms.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Data sources included 27 interviews, 98 survey responses, and over 600 autoethnographic memos.
  • Observed reseller communities across platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube.
  • Triangulated findings with national survey data on gig work and resale.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Study focuses on U.S.-based, English-speaking resellers, limiting generalizability.
  • Autoethnographic methods may privilege the researcher’s experiences.
  • Future research should explore collective organizing and alternative governance models for platform labor.

Summary

This paper investigates how Poshmark resellers resist platformic constraints through everyday tactics like automation, cross-listing, and reciprocal metric inflation. Drawing on four years of ethnographic data, it frames these practices as forms of everyday resistance that challenge the platform’s extractive labor model while remaining entangled with its logics. The study highlights the intersectional dynamics of this resistance, shaped by gender, race, and class, and calls for further exploration of worker-led infrastructures and collective agency in platform economies.