Sadly a lot of what's featured on Etsy now is mass produced crap masquerading as handmade.
I get why it was essential to the business. You can only grow so much as a small truly handmade market. Then it's OK to sell "vintage" clothing and on and on...
Yeah, I hear that. Growth is absolutely a factor, and fairness is another factor. Like, how do you define "handmade" without punishing people who get too successful ("oh no, I have more orders than ever and can't make them all myself anymore. Do I have to stop selling if I get help?"), and while still being simple enough that content moderators can fairly and reproducibly apply rules for listings that are challenged. You basically end up at one end of the spectrum or the other, "everything has to be truly handmade, and we're okay being really restrictive" or some variant of "authorship is really the thing we care about".
I get why it was essential to the business. You can only grow so much as a small truly handmade market. Then it's OK to sell "vintage" clothing and on and on...