Indeed, you cannot deny the middleman's importance when dealing with an anonymous person on the internet. Reputation is a key factor there. If you can build a solid online reputation, you will likely get the payment or product first. This applies only to public forums like BitcoinTalk and hack forums. Still, this forum has middleman services to eliminate the possibility of scams.
The fact is, forum middlemen do not ask for your private information like your Real name, Identity or your electricity bills. But when you deal with some specific platforms like Binance and other centralized platforms, you compromise your private information.
Yes, especially now scammers are also using different strategies to target people. Some put an effort to build a fake exchange with fake volume. It will looks like they are having an actual supply when the reality is they don't have. I've experience that in a well known website because they have many shillers and many listing agents, they dm you if they see you are into trading.