It doesn't look like that's what's happening. This is only an issue because Dropbox isn't trying to be a file sync application any more, and is instead trying to be a userspace network filesystem driver.
Exactly that! Compare the simplicity from the original Dropbox app to the behemoth of what it is now...
The original Dropbox wasn't just simple to use, it was also simple to understand: you knew what it was doing and how it worked, well enough to have correct expectations about how it would behave in circumstances like having a slow or broken internet connection. I guess they now consider those circumstances to be so exceptionally rare that they can be ignored.
They painted themselves in to that corner by selling up to 3TB of storage on the idea that you could have access to all of it any time [you’re online] even on your <1TB laptop