The bitcoin when it was born was distributed for free then with time it gained value, there were no other projects, then as theBitcoin has grown in value, many other projects have begun, many of the projects were born to scam investors, for me all new projects should be distributed for free.
Several years ago I joined one of the first successful airdrops for free, the project was Decred, coins were sent to 3.000 holders and it became a profitable coin. Most projects that came later, unfortunately, preferred the ICO formula: a much faster way to make fast money than giving away your coins/tokens and hodling for months or years until they gain some value, but that showed to be prone to abuses by Devs and team members.
After ICOs were introduced, scam cryptocurrency projects started coming out more often because people saw that projects running ICOs are gaining a lot of investments for doing nothing other than some promotions and stuff, so many scammer groups started creating their scam projects only to lure investors and loot the money that they invest in the ICOs with the hope that they might get good returns when the token is launched in the markets.
And that trend is still going on, there are a lot of scammers creating fake websites and fake projects these days only to get investors and run away with their money, people need to stop investing in tokens that are not launched by trusted sources like Launchpads of trusted exchanges, etc.