Freelancer sites seem to end up in a hostile 3-way fight. Customers, clients, and the middle man each one trying to screw the other two groups. And it gets wor

Freelancer sites seem to end up in a hostile 3-way fight. Customers, clients, and the middle man each one trying to screw the other two groups. And it gets worse with scale because it turns into a race to the bottom, the good players get lost and lumped together with the bad ones you can't spot/differentiate them among the sea of crap. First some sites like Elance/Upwork/oDesk/Freelancer came along and they abused their popularity more and more every day. Upwork has gone completely insane in the past few years treating freelancers like dirt. Then from there you get another generation of sites that basically capitalised on "we are the good guys trust us" marketing. They do some higher end marketing. Often (effectively) saying "yeah those cheap Upwork guys are terrible ... just try us we are different". They also tend to be hollow, just a shiny store front, but in principle still the same troubling incentives are at play.