[A_D_E_P_T]

Yeah, I began to notice this a year or two ago.

Etsy used to be a place to check out artisanal craft goods. Not necessarily antiques, but the sort of small-batch stuff that was hard to find elsewhere on the internet. Exotic jewelry, one-off wooden carvings, semi-custom knives, etc.

Now it's a place to check out mass-produced Indian and Pakistani merchandise. It has become worse even than eBay in that regard. It's superficially the same stuff it has always been -- exotic jewelry, wooden carvings, knives, etc. -- but the quality is much lower and the value just isn't there. And it could well be that you buy something on Etsy only to see it later on Amazon.com.

Also I feel like prices on Etsy have risen in an unusual and remarkable way over the past few years. Could be because of higher platform costs to vendors & the forced advertising scheme mentioned in the article.