Time machine backups up the Downloads folder every backup

On my current and previous MBP, for some reason, after some event changes something, Time Machine decides that my Downloads folder has changed between every backup. Not just a file, but the entire folder - all 20GB of it - and backs it up again and again and again... I've looked to see if there's any hidden meta data associated with the Downloads folder (ls -l@d ~/Downloads), and there is none.
The only thing I've been able to do is to copy the contents of my Downloads folder to an external drive. Log out as my normal user and log back in as another admin user. Then I delete the Downloads folder of my regular user. Recreate the Downloads folder and copy the content of my external copy back to the new Downloads folder. After that, TM does one full backup and after that goes back to making regular sized backups ... for a while. After some indeterminate event happens, I start the cycle again.
Help?

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