In my experience, Etsy and Amazon are both following the same trajectory. Lower quality, lower value, fake and imitation products becoming more common, etc. On Etsy, it used to be the norm that a product would be unique, interesting, and probably handmade. Now, there’s a decent amount of 3D/screen printed junk that might also have some AI slop thrown in for good measure. The corporations have also moved in, just like they did with Airbnb.

The most common issue for me is what happened when I bought a custom dog bowl, thinking the ceramic was made by the seller. Later stumbled upon something similar and realized it was just an off the shelf bowl and the dog’s name had been painted on. That not worth nothing, and it was still probably nicer than what I could’ve gotten on Amazon, and maybe I should’ve asked before buying. But there’s just a lot of that, “make a quick buck” type of stuff and it’s not always obvious.