Nah mobile homes are built to poor standards with poor materials, while most tiny houses are built to the same standards as a stick-built regular house. It’s more like exchanging size for quality.
Unfortunately and realistically, when you go searching the internet for ideas and inspiration for tiny homed, you’ll mostly find people who just want to avoid property taxes and building codes to go live in a trailer park.
You’re sort of right and sort of very wrong. There are a lot of badly built mobile homes, and some very well built tiny homes, for sure. Unfortunately the large majority of tiny home companies have avoided complying with the national building codes and are instead building only to RV standards. That’s not to say they aren’t doing good work, but RVIA standards are well short of NBC in terms of safety and durability. That’s why you’ll usually see a disclaimer on tiny builder sites saying their homes aren’t meant for long term full time occupancy. It’s also why getting affordable insurance for a tiny home is very expensive and difficult.
The tiny home movement is a lot older than that, but yeah, more or less. Only distinction is that people usually want more of whatever given product, except with homes, where upkeep means having “too much house” can be a real life pain in the ass. It’s just more hours out of your day, having to upkeep any given room from weathering and getting dirty. Then it just comes down to personal preferences.
But they are definitely liked due to being cheaper, no question.