When I've seen someone have those referral links and I can see that the way he introduces it is not that humble, I would usually not sign up under his links, and most people right now are doing this, like if they saw a referral link, they would usually go direct to the website, not under them. It is really not working now as people are already aware of it as they prefer not to be under someone else or they just want those referrers to earn.
Exactly mate and I thought I was the only one having to notice some of this things because most times I'm also a victim of it and at the long run after seeing a service or product of a website through the referral links of someone, I simply go straight to the website rather than using the referral links of others and mkat times I do this because I'm ways trying to stay conscious in the industry and web space as I'm sure that those scamming criminals aren't relegating and are out there to scam people of their hard earned money and there are possibilities of sending phasing links and waiting to launch an attack on me after having an accumulated balanace.
I agree with you because going through a referral link of others isn't a good experience, but sometime it's okay to be someone's referral. There are people who work really hard to promote a site or a service and those who are doing it mostly to gain referrals deserve that thing. However, if someone is trying the negative methods to add referrals to their profile then in that case it's always recommended to avoid being referral of those individuals.
In fact the referral thing is mainly made for the purpose of promotion and the ones who have many referrals are good promotors of a service or a site. The websites offer those people some extra rewards because the sites know that each customer that joins their service will spend far more than the rewards they give to those members who bring new customers. That's why almost every successful site offers referral privilege's.
The system was very much in use in the days of those click-to-pay sites like Neobux, and others, I can't recall the names of other sites because I used those sites in late 2010's, but they had such programs and they used to pay the ones who had brought many referrals for them. Nowadays, the same strategy is used by the online casinos and other gambling sites. They give good amount of rewards to the members with many referrals, and I have seen that many Youtubers are the ones getting enough referrals under them.