It makes it feel sketchy. I don't know what the state of buyer protection is. I've read that sellers sometimes list in other countries to get around the PayPal buyer protections or otherwise get paid via some unprotected method.

I can't believe all those hundreds of thousands of listings would continue to exist if there weren't some kind of pay off. Somebody's got to be making money somehow, as it's been happening for ages.

Also, it makes searching difficult. Can't really sort by price anymore, because the lowest prices are almost entirely scams.

It's just a much less pleasant platform when half the listing are fake. This is most extreme on GPUs and RAM, of course, since that's where the feeding frenzy is happening, but it's true of many categories with expensive goods.

> I've read that sellers sometimes list in other countries to get around the PayPal buyer protections

The buyer protections don’t really vary much, but it’s true in some countries they get more protections but it’s more regarding to buyer’s remorse rather than Items Not As Described.

> or otherwise get paid via some unprotected method

At least in North America (and maybe everywhere else), you’ve been required to pay via eBay for all transactions for the last decade or more. No more money orders, bank transfers, cheques or wire transfers or cash. And you can’t easily contact sellers/buyers directly anymore, it’s all through the platform and they block a lot of suspect messages/keywords.