Nah, that's not true. If you got lucky on the airdrops and bounties, you can make a really valuable amounts of money from them. I think they can still be considered to, as free because some of them doesn't require us to deposit some money or cryptos first. There are some who does that but it was still optional and they might still offer a better reward than the free ones.

This is why programs like these can still get a lot of demand from the public. It can only be the same as investing, trading and other paid earning opportunities out there. Aside from them, there are also faucet sites. They might give tiny amounts but if we can HODL them for a long period of time and we can get lucky that the cryptos that we hold have pumped up, that can also give us a fortune.