I don't agree.
I won't deny your experience, but mine has been wholly different. Part of this is because I have deliberately changed my focus to move away from the areas where pay is low and competition is high. But even ignoring that, IMO the overall quality of jobs and the utility of the site has improved significantly.
I go back to the late 2000s and early 2010s, a time when sites like oDesk and Elance were just FILLED with clients looking to "get rich quick." Outright scams, requests to write novel material for a penny a word... dozens, hundreds of them a day. I see far fewer now. I see more clients looking for a legitimate alternative to conventional hiring to get real work done by people with real skills.
Is it perfect? Of course not. I've criticized Upwork many times in areas I feel they could do better, and especially, where they could be more proactive. But there has been a lot of improvement.
They do a much better job now of dealing with fake and spamming freelancers. Last year the site had constant downtime issues; this is now much improved as well. Client quality overall is slightly improved, but more importantly, the number of higher-end clients is dramatically higher. (I don't care if 500 new lousy clients join the site if 100 new good clients do as well.) CS is still hit or miss but the moderators on this forum are among the best I have ever encountered in participating in and running online discussion communities for over 25 years.
"High fee on first 500 USD"
Avoid small jobs or just work this into your pricing. I am looking to build-long term relationships, so I simply view Upwork's pricing as "10% plus $50," which is entirely reasonable.
"Clients expect too much and pay too little."
Then you are not filtering as well as you could. There will always be cheap clients (just as there will always be rip-off freelancers, which nobody here likes to talk about much). Filter them, ignore them, look for the good stuff.
"I'm guessing no one (not me at least) want to risk their high score profile and job success for a 100 USD task."
The risk to your JSS has almost nothing to do with the size of the job (as long as it's not $5) and everything to do with properly assessing the client and task.
"I'm starting to see more and more clients asking/ almost demanding high-quality work for no to little money."
This has been a constant since online freelancing started. But again, it actually used to be much worse.
Anyone here remember "This is an easy job for someone who knows what they are doing"? Some Internet "guru" got famous telling clients that they should use these "magic words" to instantly get work done cheap on freelancing sites. I used to literally see it dozens of times a day. Now I see things like this only a handful of times a week. Part of that, again, is screening, but there's also been a shakeout and most of the "get rich quick" clients have realize they can't and moved onto other things.
"Even the interview process is ridiculous many times for the position."
Entirely under your control.
"I had one American company now promising "career growth" and other fancy words, but they want me to go through an "extensive recruitment process" as well as profile check and tests for 8 USD/ hour!?"
Response: "I'm sorry, this will require too much time for the pay offered. Good luck with your project." Pull proposal. Done.
"Most upwork clients only want to pay 0.02-0.03 USD/ word for top-quality work?"
Then how are there translation freelancers making far more who have more work than they know what to do with?
"I apologize for rambling without any solutions of my own. I'd say that Upwork need to set rules, not just recommendations, but that will lower the amount of client work and money for them."
Venting is fine, we all need to do it, but here I think you are recognizing that these are not simple issues.
