The persistent comment location thing would be extremely nice. One of my main gripes. For the article problem you're having, have you tried enabling the "use 3rd party browser" setting?
I've heard that SwiftKey tracks keystrokes, so I'm in the same boat as you. SwiftKey is incredible, but I'd rather lean more into privacy focused alternatives.
I noticed this as well. I'm liking the direction this update is taking, seems a bit more optimized too. Hopefully this is a simple bug fix.