Byes in swiss tournaments

This has been mentioned before in forums but I haven't seen any adequate explanation or changes to this. 

Swiss tournaments need even numbers and if there are an odd number of entrants then one person's going to get a bye each round. Obviously this makes sense. What doesn't make sense is why you get 0 points. A bye isn't a forfeiture, participants shouldn't be punished because of the number of participants in a tournament. This makes even less sense when you consider Chess.com state that a bye means that you're given 1 point, when in reality you're given 0 (https://support.chess.com/article/1310-what-is-a-bye-in-a-tournament#:~:text=In%20Swiss%20tournaments%2C%20if%20the,you%20had%20won%20a%20game.) Even according to FIDE competition rules, the only mention of byes states that that participant will be given half a point. A bye should not be detrimental to the performance of a participant, chess.com has got this wrong.

The selection of which player gets a bye also doesn't make sense. It's stated that the lowest rated player gets the bye, but this isn't true. I entered a tournament, was given a bye, then watched two 300 rated players playing each other who are hundreds of rating points below me. This wouldn't be such a problem if the bye was given as a win and not a loss or even half a point as it's supposed to be. Even if the "lowest rated player losing points doesn't matter because they're not competitive" thing actually applied, no one should suffer harm to their chances of winning tournaments for any reason other than poor performance or cheating. No one enters tournaments without some desire to win.

Is this broken or something? Because even if there are additional rules I'm unaware of, there are clear contradictions and inconsistencies in this.

In all of my USCF experience, byes are a full point.  In choosing who gets the bye, the bye is given to player with the lowest score (total points), not necessarily to the lowest-rated player.