I think it's more of a paradigm shift in the game coming from so much computer analysis. Everyone learns the "cool moves" and tries to play chess as a blitzkrieg, rather than the slow positional play.
Is chess.com filled with bots

Yes there are way too many ways to cheat
and if you don’t cheat you don’t win against someone cheating so you are incentivized to cheat

There's no incentive to cheat unless your personal aspirations stretch as far as becoming the input middleman of a computer program or you've somehow arrived at the belief that someone other than yourself cares about your rating.
From my experience and from comparing chess.com to OTB tournaments and Lichess the Website feels like it's filled with very bot-like players. super tactical and trappy but terrible positional play.
Did chess.com put these players in to make it appear as if the website has more players than it actually has and that instead it is actually dying?