That last question sure does make it sound like you know exactly what bounties are, lol.  Assuming you really don't know, they're kind of like signature campaigns where members get paid to promote something--except bounty managers are/were notorious for accepting anyone who could use a keyboard.  And yes, bounties got abused harder than anything I've seen abused on this forum thus far.  There were alt accounts enrolled in the same bounty, fake social media accounts being employed, and other stuff I can't even think of right now. 

Plus bounty hunters often didn't get paid, because they'd do all the advertising "work" up front, hoping to get paid in whatever shit token was being pumped and dumped, and a lot of times the owner of the coin/business/whatever would screw everyone over in the end. 

I thought most of that came to a screeching halt in late 2017/early 2018 when the ICO bubble popped, but I haven't kept tabs on what's been going on, so who knows.  But if you're wondering why there's a baseline level of paranoia among some of the older members of bitcointalk, what I just described is one of many reasons for it.