This glossary serves as a bridge between the worlds of reselling labor, feminist economics, and the evolving dynamics of work in platform-driven economies. It unpacks key terms from these domains, highlighting their interconnectedness and relevance to secondhand workers like resellers. We invite you to reflect on how these concepts relate to your daily experiences and the role you can have in shaping secondhand industries. Our hope is this glossary can serve as a conversational tool to spark dialogue within reseller communities about labor, care, and agency.
AfrofuturismA cultural and artistic movement that imagines futures through the lens of Black experiences, emphasizing resilience and innovation in the face of oppression. In the context of reselling, Afrofuturism might inspire alternative visions for secondhand economies where marginalized communities create new, equitable market systems.
AlgorithmA set of rules or instructions designed to perform tasks, such as sorting products, pricing, or determining the visibility of items. For resellers, platform algorithms and design govern many essential mechanisms on the platform, such as how listings are displayed to potential buyers, or how content is moderated on the platform, making them crucial yet opaque factors that shape work in online marketplaces. Although resellers and other secondhand workers often talk about gaming or beating “the Algorithm” of a given platform, they usually mean the combination of algorithmic and design features characteristic of that platform. These algorithmic features are usually complex, opaque to platform users and ever-changing, making these strategies hard to verify. Moreover, it is crucial to remember that algorithmic systems are created and maintained by humans who decide on what features and outcomes to prioritize.
Algorithmic BiasRefers to the prejudices or favoritism embedded in platform algorithms, often leading to uneven opportunities or burdens for certain groups of people. Algorithmic bias in reselling can affect which items or profiles are promoted or demoted in visibility, influencing sales performance and replicating social inequalities.Algorithmic GovernanceThe management and control of human activities through automated systems and algorithms on platforms like Poshmark or eBay. Algorithms mediate things like post and account visibility, pricing, and even account suspensions, often in opaque ways (to the users). Like other users, resellers must constantly adapt to these rules, which significantly shape their business strategies and outcomes. Researchers of platform work have developed related terms to describe how algorithms, and more broadly, platforms, create mechanisms that ‘manage’ and influence workers (algorithmic management, platformic management).Algorithmic OpacityThe lack of transparency around how algorithms operate. In reselling, algorithmic opacity means sellers often don’t know why some posts/items are promoted more than others, leading to frustration and a sense of confusion in navigating platform rules.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)A term originating in the 1950s to describe technologies that mimic tasks or processes understood as human problem-solving or cognition within the fields of computing and cognitive science. However, the very notion of “human intelligence” underlying these systems is neither universal nor neutral. From the start, AI has relied on specific, often capitalist-centric interpretations of what counts as “intelligent” and what counts as work, particularly labor seen as suitable for automation under a production-focused paradigm. In this sense, the term AI is inherently political: it redefines and re-values (some would say de-values) human capabilities based on whether they can be replicated or replaced by machines.
This political and economic potential is at the heart of AI’s impact in various domains, including reselling on secondhand marketplaces. Such platforms use AI to analyze buyer behavior, forecast or dynamically suggest prices, and manage search algorithms, shaping how products get visibility or how resale work gets done and gets rewarded monetarily. Some resellers and third-party tool providers also participate in these digital ecosystems relying on AI tools to automate tasks like listing or customer support.
Aspirational LaborA concept coined by Erin Duffy that refers to work performed in the hopes of future rewards, often without immediate compensation. In reselling, aspirational labor describes the effort resellers put into building their brand or online presence, often with the dream of achieving greater success or financial stability.AutomationThe use of technology to perform tasks with reduced or hidden human intervention. In reselling, automation tools (such as bots) can assist with cross-listing, managing inventory, or customer communication, but are also regulated by platforms. Remember the term ‘automation’ is not ‘black and white’ since many digital tools involve various kinds and levels of automation. The ways a platform defines what constitutes automation, is also the way the platform moderates its use via rules or technical means, affecting secondhand workers labor.
BOLO Brands
(Be On the Lookout)These are lists of brands that resellers, especially on platforms like Poshmark, consider valuable based on current market trends. By being aware of and purchasing these brands, resellers aim to increase profits. However, the value of BOLO brands is highly dependent on factors such as geographic location, buyer demographics, and platform-specific market fluctuations, leading some resellers to view them as unreliable guides. BOLO lists also reflect the fluctuating nature of platform work, where visibility and hype influence demand unpredictably, and also point to a place where platforms could more transparently communicate data to secondhand workers.CAPTCHAA security mechanism often encountered when logging into or interacting with platforms and websites. These often involve logical or visual puzzles and clicking boxes to ‘prove you are a human’. On platforms like Poshmark, CAPTCHAS are used to curb automation use, resulting in additional click work for resellers. Bots can sometimes use CAPTCHA solvers, which rely on remote workers solving these puzzles for very little money.
Care Work
Tasks and responsibilities involved in supporting others, especially children, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities. These tasks include things such as cooking, cleaning, and more generally providing physical or emotional caregiving assistance. Most often undertaken by women and immigrants, this labor is frequently unpaid, underpaid, or precarious despite being vital for human survival and well-being (some would argue this undervaluation is central to capitalism).
In the context of reselling and secondhand marketplaces, care work intersects with the dual roles many resellers, especially caregivers who tend to be women, fulfill. For instance, sourcing inventory may overlap with shopping duties for children or family members, blurring the lines between personal caregiving tasks and entrepreneurial activities. In our studies, many mothers report interweaving mothering responsibilities with reselling for financial sustenance. Additionally, volunteers in thrift stores (often women) who receive and sort donated items, or resellers who clean, repair, and research products, perform forms of extended care work that support reuse. This latter labor, although enjoyed and valued by some resellers who like the labor of conservation, is frequently undervalued or uncompensated via the final sale price, even though it is essential for keeping secondhand economies sustainable.
Collective SensemakingThe process by which groups come together to interpret, understand, and respond to shared challenges or uncertainties. For online secondhand worker communities, collective sensemaking involves sharing insights, experiences, and strategies such as using tools to navigate platform demands, market trends, and technical issues. This process often takes place informally in online forums, social media groups, and reseller communities. Currently, reseller communities rely heavily on informal networks to interpret platform changes, algorithmic behaviors, and market fluctuations. Without clear guidance or transparency from platforms, resellers must crowdsource knowledge to adapt to new rules or unexpected shifts. This informal approach, while building forms of community, is often limited by incomplete information and driven by speculation.
Cross-listingThe practice of listing the same item on multiple reselling platforms simultaneously. Cross-listing allows resellers to maximize their exposure and coordinate listings across platforms. This kind of automation replaces repetitive data entries across platforms, and effectively creates a patchwork of different platform systems. Generally, Cross-listing is not referred to as automation, which confuses some resellers who see bots frowned upon.
Death PileFrom the family of deadstock, death piles are accumulated, unsold inventory that may literally be stacked in an unorganized pile, or neatly stored away for months (or years!) without being sold. Some resellers refer to pieces which they sourced but have not listed as part of their 'deat pile', while others include listed pieces which are 'sitting' on a platform without moving.
Given the consumerist joy of sourcing, many resellers struggle with a balance between acquiring new potential 'inventory' and reselling or circulating it. This causes a bottleneck of stuff which accumulates in ‘death piles’ in their living rooms, under their beds, or in whatever spaces are available to them (the bigger your living space, the bigger potential for your death pile). Even thrift and charity shops have death piles, evidencing the massive amounts of discarded clothes and consumer things that await to be revived in secondhand markets. This results in online groups where resellers motivate each other to list or organize their 'death piles' such as the infamous Facebook group ‘Death Pile Destruction.'
Design FictionA method that uses fictional narratives or speculative designs to explore how future technologies or systems could shape society. For reselling, design fiction can be a tool to reimagine platform dynamics, fairer market practices, or the integration of emerging AI tools in a way that benefits marginalized workers.
Diverse EconomiesA concept that broadens traditional views of the economy by recognizing non-market and informal work as valuable economic activities. In the context of secondhand economies, it highlights how resellers contribute to a circular economy that operates outside the boundaries of traditional capitalist production, incorporating donations, bartering, gifting, inheriting and alternative exchange systems.
Double Burden/ShiftThe dual responsibilities of paid employment and unpaid domestic or care work, often disproportionately done by women. The double burden reveals deep gender inequalities within economic systems, as domestic responsibilities are often undervalued or ignored by traditional economic analyses. This impacts women’s career opportunities, income, and overall well-being. Many resellers and other gig workers feel this double or even triple burden: they use reselling as an additional flexible form of income to accommodate care work; but also have time constraints which can limit their business.
Generative AI (GenAI)A branch of Artificial Intelligence dedicated to constructing text, images, code, or other forms of content by statistically and structurally recomposing data from very large datasets. Its roots trace back to Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks and more prominently to Transformer models, originally developed by Google researchers. This technology was later embraced and commercialized by companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or DeepSeek. Like other forms of AI, generative models inherit political and economic dimensions: they raise concerns about bias, capitalist-driven hype, labor displacement, and the invisibilization of human workers who make these technologies possible. Moreover, they require substantial computational power, adding energy consumption and legal dilemmas (e.g., around copyright and data ownership) to the existing ethical and regulatory debates.
In the realm of reselling and secondhand platforms, generative AI is being used for automating tasks like writing product descriptions from uploaded images. Sites such as eBay, Depop, and Poshmark have begun experimenting with these features, often with uneven results. Many Poshmark users express frustration at the inaccuracy of its “Smart Listing” suggestions, while others see potential in eBay’s “Magical Listing” tool despite its current unreliability. These developments raise crucial questions about whether “automating” tasks platforms think resellers wish to avoid might inadvertently create new kinds of labor: for example, the extra steps needed to review, correct, or supplement AI-generated content. Moreover, these tools add to ongoing questions about algorithmic bias and opacity: instead, resellers could question what could be changes that platforms could implement that most benefit resellers, whether these have shiny, stakeholder-pleasing AI or not.
Gig WorkTemporary, flexible work sometimes mediated through digital platforms, where workers are paid per task or project without a relationship of traditional employment with the company. The exact definition of ‘gig work’, and by extension ‘gig worker’ is the source of debates in academia and policy, adding to a difficulty in measuring how widespread and important it is as a kind of labor and a source of income. Via tax and financial estimates, some believe up to 1/3rd of working individuals in the US do some kind of ‘gig’ or informal work. Studies estimate that gig work and ‘gig supp’ (supplementing another paid occupation with gig work) is more frequent and financially important for women, especially women of color, who are also less likely to have formal retirement arrangements.
Like other gig workers, resellers operate outside of traditional employment protections, navigating income instability and platform control over key aspects of their business. Note that the IRS has started classified reselling as a kind of gig work.Image ProcessingThe use of AI tools to automatically enhance, recognize, or sort images. One tool which is essential to resellers based on image processing (and large datasets of entries historically generated by users like resellers) is Google Images. Reselling platforms often use image processing for visual searches to make suggestions for listings and identifying counterfeit products. This may help streamline operations but can also introduce errors. These systems can disproportionately harm people from marginalized groups given the biases in datasets and biased decisions of the engineers. For example, it could result in penalizing resellers with darker skin color.
Information AsymmetryA situation where one party has more or better information than another. In reselling, platforms gather data about customers, sellers, behaviors, and inventories, having visibility into patterns of use which giver the platform more control and power over all parties. Additionally, information asymmetries also arise from the ways platforms build their technical backends, with algorithmic and other mechanisms mediating interactions on the platform.Infrastructural FictionsRelated to Design and Speculative fictions, infrastructural fictions focuse more on the underlying systems (like logistics, platforms, and supply chains) that structure society, challenging us to rethink who designs, maintains, and benefits from these complex networks. By making these invisible infrastructures visible, this narrative approach critiques how they shape power dynamics and daily life.IntersectionalityA framework coined by black feminists in the US for understanding how social factors (e.g., gender, race, class) intersect and impact individual experiences, particularly with regard to power and oppression. In reselling, intersectionality helps explain the diverse challenges faced by resellers from different backgrounds.Invisible Labor
Work that is essential but often goes unpaid and unrecognized within traditional economic metrics. This includes caregiving, emotional support, and community maintenance, which are predominantly performed by women and marginalized groups. These forms of labor sustain households and communities but are typically excluded from standard economic models. In the context of reselling, invisible labor extends to caring for and repairing secondhand items, as well as the demands imposed by digital platforms. Platforms further obscure this labor through the extensive, unpaid time resellers spend finding, cleaning, and preparing items for sale. Additionally, resellers face hidden labor demands in meeting platforms’ interaction requirements, such as constant sharing, listing updates, and engagement.
ModerationThe control over the users behaviors on the platform by human and automated means. This includes reporting of counterfeit items or inappropriate behaviors by other users, the platform’s regulation and control of bots through technical means and actions on users, and the automated detection and decision-making on cases by algoirthmic systems. The use of AI to automatically monitor and enforce platform rules, such as detecting prohibited items or inappropriate listings is a hot subject of research which platforms currently consider as ways of leaning their moderation efforts and human labor. Automated moderation in reselling helps platforms manage large volumes of content but can lead to errors, penalizing resellers unfairly or inconsistently.Platform Co-operativesPlatform co-ops are digital platforms owned and governed by the workers or users who rely on them, rather than by private corporations or external shareholders. Rooted in principles of cooperative economics and solidarity, platform co-ops aim to distribute profits more equitably and give members direct control over platform policies and practices. Examples include worker-owned delivery services, freelance marketplaces, and artisan selling platforms. Platform co-ops face challenges such as securing funding without compromising cooperative principles, scaling governance effectively, competing with well-funded corporate platforms, and ensuring members have the technical and managerial skills needed to sustain operations.Platform WorkWork that is mediated by digital platforms, where resellers operate under specific rules, algorithms, and interfaces that govern their interactions with buyers, suppliers, and the platform itself. Resellers rely on platforms for visibility and transaction management, but also face challenges like fluctuating fees, algorithmic changes, and platform governance.Prefigurative PoliticsThe practice of enacting the change you want to see in the world through current actions and systems. For resellers, this might involve building more cooperative or equitable business models within the existing constraints of platforms, using their practices to critique or subvert the dominant capitalist system.Recommender SystemsAlgorithms designed to suggest products or listings to buyers based on their browsing history, preferences, or other data. For resellers, recommender systems are vital as they determine how often and to whom their items are shown, thus directly impacting sales. Note that recommender systems also interact with the user interface and default settings. On Poshmark, the importance of sharing is due to the default ordering setup which is “last shared.
ResellerAn individual who buys goods (often secondhand) and sells them at a markup. While many also have offline selling venues like booths at pop-ups and flea markets, a growing number of resellers rely on platforms like eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Depop, or Poshmark. Resellers are integral to the secondhand economy in the US, often operating as gig workers under constraints defined by platforms which affects their pricing, visibility, and business strategies.
‘Reseller’ is an emic term (created by the community) that not all people doing this work identify with. Those most active in online communities may identify as ‘resellers’ (part or full-time), but others describe themselves as small business owners, flippers, or microentrepreneurs. Resellers are a varied group, with different platforms attracting diverse demographics (see Intersectionality). Some fully depend on reselling financially, while others are employed in other waged/unwaged occupations. Some are housemakers hustling, or disabled people whose only source of paid income is reselling; and some are unemployed or between jobs. Many resell only when they need to supplement their income or find themselves in need, while others do it more as a hobby or as an exploratory venture.
Share JailA colloquial term similar to ‘shadow ban’ used by resellers on platforms like Poshmark to describe the temporary suspension of the ability to share due to reaching sharing limits within a given period. The share jail is usually felt through share limits rather than receiving an explicit notice from the platform. This emphasizes how platform rules around content interaction impact reseller visibility and sales. "Share jail" is an example of how resellers’ control over their visibility is mediated by algorithmic limits imposed by platforms and how reseller communities make sense of technical mechanisms of control.Share TrainA cooperative effort among resellers, especially on social selling platforms, where members take turns sharing each other’s listings to increase exposure and sales. This social practice underscores the communal aspects of reselling and how peer support helps resellers navigate platform-imposed limits. The "share train" represents an organic workaround to algorithmic restrictions and reflects collective forms of labor within the gig economy.Sharing BotAn automated tool that performs repetitive tasks, such as sharing listings or following users, on behalf of resellers on Poshmark.com. While bots can save time, their use possibly violates platform rules, putting resellers at risk of suspension. The enforcement of bot moderation is ambiguous on Poshmark, highlighting the tension between automation and platform governance.Speculative FictionSpeculative fiction is a genre encompassing works that imagine alternative realities, exploring "what if" scenarios that challenge existing social, political, and technological norms. It tends to focus on specific ‘artifacts’ or scenarios, and includes science fiction, fantasy, and other genres. By suspending the constraints of current reality, speculative fiction allows readers and creators to explore new possibilities and question the status quo with compelling visuals and stories.
Terms of Service (TOS)The rules and guidelines that users must follow to participate in a platform. For resellers, violations of the Terms of Service (ToS) can result in suspension, reduced visibility, or other penalties, making them essential to understand and navigate when managing a business online. It is often unclear how platforms enforce these terms and whether they are uniformly enforced, especially when the moderation is done algorithmically.Time PovertyA concept referring to the lack of time available to complete necessary work and personal tasks, often affecting gig workers like resellers who must juggle multiple roles. Time poverty highlights the unpaid or invisible labor in platform-based economies, where algorithmic demands (e.g., constant sharing, listing updates) add to the workload without compensation.Time UseA way of measuring how time is being allocated to different activities, including paid and unpaid tasks, usually to identify, measure and intervene on time poverty. For resellers, time use reveals hidden labor such as sourcing, cleaning, photographing, and constant platform interactions needed to maintain visibility and sales. A focus on time use advocates for platform designs and policies that respect workers' time, reduce repetitive tasks, and support a healthier work-life balance.
VERO (Verified Rights Owner) ListA list of brands and products monitored by platforms like eBay for intellectual property violations. Sellers must avoid listing items from these brands without proper authorization or avoid using copyrighted materials to prevent their listings from being removed or accounts being suspended. The platform delivers the violations notices but is often unclear about the reasons or how they were detected. This increases the information asymmetry in the way platforms and corporate actors govern reselling work on platforms.WellbeingIn feminist economics, well-being goes beyond just profit, focusing on factors like work-life balance, health, social support, and autonomy. Gibson & Graham discuss 5 kinds of wellbeing in their well-being scorecard: Material, Occupational, Social. Community and Physical. In secondhand economies, we can use this perspective to understand what aspects of our secondhand activities contribute to our individual and communal wellbeing. This focus can help resellers advocate for fairer income structures, supportive community features, transparent systems, and legal protections.