Maybe that will not be a scam but most people will still considered that is scam reminds they are not asked to pay some TON before the the airdrop gives. The owner of the project must clarify the procedure to people before they run the airdrop programs so people will not be misunderstanding with the rules. I guess that is miscommunication between the teams and people who want to do many tasks to get the rewards from the airdrop. If the teams can explain about the requirement before they run the project, maybe the misunderstanding will not happen. People will choose the project by themselves and will decide if they want to pay some TON as fees or will search the airdrop programs that will be free.
Even before, there are already airdrops like that which requires users to send some coins. This must be part of their mechanics. Even though rules are important, indeed that some are not clarifying it. No wonder why they got negative comments but if it wasn't intentional, I think we can forgive them. I am sure we also did a mistake because we are only a human. Even though there are now rules, misunderstanding must still be there.
We can only hope that they will be corrected easily. No one is forced here, so yeah that it was the people are the ones who will choose a project that they like. For me, I can prefer the free ones because I'm always low in budget. I understand that free ones can also pay less and then many are not legit.