BUG: Tracking sometimes temporarily set on topics

Although I have tracking for threads turned off in my preferences, I have lately been sometimes seeing those gray and blue circles with numbers in them for one topic (thread) in a particular category (forum, e.g. ATMB).

When I refresh the page, these numbers go away, even though I do not visit the topic.

This seems an odd course of events. I would expect that, since I have that option turned off, I would never be set to following a thread in the first place. But it seems it is being set, and then the refresh then remembers that my preferences.

No matter what the cause, this seems to be a bug. It seems, in fact, to be a regression, as I’ve only seen it happening or less than a week, at most.

I noticed something else: the numbers are generally wrong. For example, there aren’t 1 new post and 3 unread old posts in the McDonald’s app thread: I read the whole thing before my post, which is currently the last one.

In fact, I think the issue usually involves a thread I’ve posted in, and it’s giving me numbers from some point before I posted.

Not just bumping, I promise. I have more info:

It seems to also specifically keep happening with this one thread, which I have never opened: