"It's not something I've noticed."

Snail, I'm not referring to the club circuit which arguably exists independently, but to the popular music scene - the stuff that's successful and that sells. If anyone doubts that "folk" hasn't morphed into a word basically meaning introspective acoustic singer/songwriter music by a sensitive youth, I'm not going to try to convince them (however before I discovered traditional song/music, that's more or less what it meant to me).

Arguably however modern popular trad. folk artists such as the women that have been discussed here, could be altering that and restoring the original meaning of the term to the public understanding, right now. Albeit piggy backing so to speak, on certain conventions of styling and presentation to be found in popular acoustic singer/songwriter musics. Sinead and others have argued that, that can only be a good thing for traditional music. And perhaps they are correct at that.

As to our US cousins posting, yes perhaps it is a phenomenon more specific to the UK trad. folk scene - the successful and more visible side of it at least.