The rise of digital platforms, forms of algorithmic management and work datafication has led to an intensification of labor exploitation, creating new inequalities but also producing new forms of resistance across the world (Bonini and Trerè, 2024). Amid this setting, craft work has recently emerged as a potential rupture to these logics. Existing research shows a global revival of craft and artisanal work in the last decade, described as a “third wave of craft” (Jakob, 2012: 130). This is commonly understood as a countercultural practice, set to ‘pragmatically resist’ capital accumulation (Luckman and Thomas, 2018; Luckman, 2015; Banks, 2014). However, craft practices are also rich in contradictions, particularly concerning the growing relevance of platform mediation within them. While the raw matter of craft work is quintessentially non-digital, social media and other types of platforms have become part and parcel of the activity, organisation, and cultures of craft work, making it an original example of platform-ised work (Gandini et al., 2024). Bringing together a diversified set of papers on craft practices, this panel explores and dissects these contradictions, questioning the extent to which they actually challenge the logics of digital labor and capitalism.