A lot of sellers are saying Upwork has changed a lot lately, and as a buyer I agree. I used lots and lots of money in Upwork, cheap and expensive. Heavy interviews and short ones. I tried all the strategies I can think of to get good freelancers.

With the AI times kicking in and the ease of dishonesty its just not a viable solution anymore.

First I will say; Yes a lot of buyers are the problem. They underpay and over demand, but right now I will just focus on my experience.

1. The price of fees; The fees are extreme, making the prices go extremely high outside of what you agree with the freelancer
2. Upwork operate in a legal grey zone. Its actually by law not legal to lock in a contract or communication to Upworks site. They treaten you with a 10.000USD fee if you take the freelancer outside Upwork, but this is not legal to do. You are absolute free and legally can pay and hire outside Upwork, even if you find the freelancer on Upwork
3. Quality. Cause of the flood of freelancers the last 5-10 years the stamp of quality in general is on the lower side of the spectrum. I have been following groups where freelancers are showing their work, and based of portfolios the general design quality is very low, even from people charging higher fees
4. BOTS! Its flooded with bots that bid on every job out there, so you will get 80% bot generated offers that have not understood the job at all
5. Buying of reviews. Upwork and Fiverr is flooded with fake reviews, and they do nothing about it, even reported
6. Both 4 and 5 in in my view scamming, and people who does this (way too many) has ruined the marked
7. You can never trust the freelancer is dedicated to your job, within the timeframe you give. When you hire someone, you pay for their time, and that time should be dedicated to the buyer. If I pay for 30 hours for something, the freelancer SHOULD work 30 hours on my project, and not 10 hours on mine, and 10 hours on someone else. No company would accept this, and still its widespread here
8. Liers, Ghosting, Low quality and bad attidiude is rapid. Some might think its only people from middle east and Asia who are in this category (as I see many does), but I hired people in the US and UK, and I had in both intances had ghosters, where they took the money and went away, to never finish the project. This is a problem worldwide.

So in general I will go back to run my own company and gather people to run the company to establish good quality and a cooperation like I did 10 years ago without sub contracting. I have started to invite different talents to join the project where everything is shared equally.