It's been like that for awhile, it didn't just pop up recently, I've always seen tons of people in all the spots for at least the past month that I've been paying attention.
It's worth getting members to bot, those places are dead in members worlds.
i logged into a world the other day to bot one of my f2p pures.
i saw about 8 bots all at goblins in lum. i think they were the same person aswell as they all had similar names like 'jw11' and 'js22' and so on. They were also all wearing the exact same thing.
Lol agree on this. When i was still f2p recently I was fishing around varrock on my main and there are like 20 bots like running to the next fishing spot its pretty hilarious xD