AI and new tools have broken the system. The tools send you email saying things like "X corp is interested in you!" and you send a resume, and you don't hear back. Nothing, not even a rejection.

Eventually you stop believing them, understanding it for the marketing spam that it is. Direct submissions are better, but only slightly. Recruiters are much better, in general, since they have a relationship with a real person at the company and can actually get your resume in front of eyes. But yeah, tools like ziprecruiter, careerboutique, jobot, etc are worse than useless: by lying to you about interest they actively discourage you from looking. There are no good alternatives (I'd love to learn I'm wrong), so you have to keep using those bad tools anyway.