It is related to reduced bot activity mainly. For the telegram thing, it is related to altcoins price drop and the fear of investing in that community.
the main purpose for these bots is to spam on ico bounties and get free tokens = free $ .. while this market is doing so bad for btc and altcoins . the data show that is doing terrible for icos as well .
also joining icos / bounties is just waste of time in this market since it is not profitable with all these scam icos or legit icos that are not able to rise the soft cap ... even those who success in getting the soft cap .. get dumped in the first exchange which leave bounties hunters with very small profits for alot of work and time spending for legit ones or for lot of spam and shitposting for those who don't care about the forum .
i expect the spam to return when the market situation improve and the bounty business return to be profitable again .