I don't agree with your comment on faucets. The reason faucets paid out more a few years back is because the pay rate is pegged/linked to the value of BTC in USD (or local fiat). As the price of BTC increases the faucet payouts go down. The fiat-based payout has remained constant. So in those terms faucets have always paid dust and the volume of actual users probably hasn't gone up any more than general awareness of bitcoin has.
They pay out substantially less now, even correcting for BTC value, than in prior years. Two other factors are that more people started fauceting, and many started using tools to automate collecting.
Faucets were originally intended to introduce people to Bitcoin and give them a bit to try out. They were never intended to be a stream of BTC income. The only people to blame for faucets being pointless, are the freeloaders...