I agree about faucets. In past it was great thing and it was possible to get decent earnings from faucets, but now things had changed and faucets become waste of time in general.
But things that you're suggesting - giveaways, aidrops and etc, isn't much better than faucets. It's still waste of time and you will earn only peanuts from it. It's definitely not the best way to start without investing.
Faucets are a bad deal, no matter how you look at them, and they were bad even in historical context.
I don't agree with you. There was time when I was able to get more than my monthly wage just from faucets, I can't call it as bad thing. And about historical context - you forget how many people got introduce to Bitcoin and crypto world exactly through faucets.