Algorithmic flexibility and everyday resistance on e-commerce platforms

Prevailing narratives in digital studies depict algorithms as opaque tools of domination, controlling user experiences and reinforcing asymmetrical power dynamics, sidelining the potential for user resistance. In line with a growing body of more nuanced perspectives, this article challenges these portrayals by exploring how online users resist algorithmic outcomes through creative and astute strategies by drawing on 27 interviews and 3 focus groups with e-commerce platform users. Combining insights from everyday resistance theories and contemporary debates on algorithmic resistance, the article frames algorithmic flexibility, the inherent programmatic contingency of algorithms, as a structural enabler for e-commerce users to influence algorithmic outcomes. The investigation of e-commerce platforms, where algorithms exert tangible influence over users’ finances, provides a valuable, yet understudied, empirical site for analysing how algorithmic resistance unfolds in daily economic life. In doing so, the paper extends conceptualisations of algorithms as instruments of power and resistance into the realm of mundane, self-interested, and often individualised encounters with algorithms. By foregrounding the entangled nature of algorithmic power and user resistance, digital platforms are positioned not as sites of unilateral control but as dynamic arenas of continuous negotiation.