I heard this from my Chinese friends and online forums. I have many Chinese friends and I don’t remember any of them ever mentioned that Taobao is trustworthy. For your question I just did a quick google search and randomly picked 2 links below. You can clearly see that Taobao even changed the rule in 2016 to mitigate consumer intimidation/harassment. If there is no such a thing as you described, why did Taobao even start the initiatives/change the rule? Not sure the situation nowadays. You said you have been shopping on Taobao over 8 years (well before 2016) so it will be a miracle you never heard it at all.
Recently Amazon removed many Chinese sellers and millions of fake reviews because these sellers paid/purchased fake reviews. I assume it is a widely accepted business model in China. I have to say that some sellers are actually pretty trustworthy and offer very good products/customer service based on my personal experience, such as Ravpower, etc. But anyway.
My Chinese friends told me that to only buy from the official or flagship stores if I ever want to try Taobao/Ali. I never tried Taobao but occasionally used Aliexpress. I only purchased from the official stores so no issues so far. I always check the sellers’ profiles (even with Amazon) when I explore the items and often see the same company behind different sellers. I guess this is another way to bypass the negative reviews/punishments. Another thing I don’t understand is why does Aliexpress collect sales tax. Neither 18650batterystore, Liion wholesale or illumn collects sales tax for my state. Does Aliexpress really send the collected sales tax to my state? I don’t believe it at all.