I think there is a decline in the trustworthiness of clients, but I think it's driven--in part--by their fear of choosing low-quality, unskilled freelancers, which has increased significantly over the past few years.
I made a similar statement in another post: Many clients are more selective these days, and for a variety of business and financial reasons. Some clients are using Upwork and other platforms to screen freelancers (i.e., "test the waters") with no real intention of hiring them. These are legitimate clients, but this specific action is abusive--especially when the client knows a freelancer must spend Connects to respond, and knows the freelancer is unaware of his/her "fishing expedition."
For example, a business looking for a freelancer (or an employee) can post a job on Upwork and receive good responses--some with complete solutions to their problems. Once the client has screened these responses, they make a decision on how, when, and where they will hire them, which may not occur for weeks or months, and could occur outside of Upwork.
Those clients don't care about the Connects we spend to send proposals; they're only concerned about getting their needs met, which means they might post jobs to look for capabilities, gather ideas, or get solutions. Many clients find this easier than posting jobs on career websites and waiting days or weeks to receive resumes. On Upwork, they receive proposals within minutes.
I think more clients are leery these days--mainly because of their distrust of the system (i.e., bots/scams, unskilled freelancers, etc.). Because of this, those clients are willing to abuse their job postings (i.e., unresponsive, ghosting, requesting test jobs, etc.) to satisfy their own needs. I'm not dismissing it or giving those clients a pass; what they're doing is abusive and it contributes to the overall risk freelancers take when using Upwork.
