My discord and telegram fill up with mindless bots (or maybe real people) spamming links and 1000%+ ROI claims in order to try to get someone to click on their invite link; so that leads me to the question, do bounty programs really work?
Yes it really works. They are just using mindless bots in order to attract investors, although that's not a good thing ethically but, they are being used that way. Bounty program really works by putting links to the IEO/ICO site of the project. It's a way of advertising the project itself.
I do believe that bounty programs still work one way or another.
It exposes to audience that are not aware of their existence.
This is the reason why there are a lot of marketing programs via social media.
People are into social media nowadays so those programs are trying to reach out those potential customers or investors.
If they haven't seen any link for that project, would they know about it? Pretty simple logic.