Freebitco had a large audience because it was one of the most popular websites among other crypto websites, it was also one of the most promoted. I remember when one of the biggest bank in my country started accepting of Bitcoin through a sister company, they were promoting Freebitco.in as one of the best ways to collect your first Bitcoins.
Even with all the recent issues with freebitco, they still have more than 20M hits per month. Still, many gamblers prefer to gamble there or some may even come there only to claim free faucets but this traffic number is kind of huge especially when you see the complaints and issues faced by gamblers on this platform.
Btw I wouldn't say that users had the opportunity to easily collect lots of sats because Bitcoin's price was low and if someone was working a job with minimum pay, would easily be able to collect lots of Bitcoins.
Mostly people who collected faucets may have sold already their sats but if someone only claimed the faucets regularly since few years, by now he must have accumulated a lot of satoshi's and considering the price of Bitcoin over a 100K now, he must be rich only by faucets but that vision and to not sell those free money, isn't something common. Most people will sell the free stuff quickly.