No, they aren't. The dots are just reversed now, they're all blue instead of all white. They do not represent anything, nor do they change if all the posts in a sub-forum are read. Just to test I went through 5 different sub-forums, marked them all as read and refreshed... no change. It just shows a blue dot now instead of a white one.

EDIT: I think I may have narrowed down the problem. Tell the tech team to look at the trending functions part of the code for this page and then look at the // login status layout changes part of the script. When a user is NOT logged in, the functionality of the new post/no new post icons works exactly like it should. When I log back in, it no longer works. I verified it across three different browsers with and without adblockers on just to make sure an adblocker wasn't the root cause.

I'm guessing there is a piece of code missing within the "if #isLoggedIn " part of the script telling the page to display class="fa fa-circle" when there is a new post and class="fa fa-circle-o" when there is not. It could also be something wrong with the script immediately above those lines of code.

Just tell them that the new posts/no new posts functionality is working properly when a user is logged out, but when a user is logged in, the functionality no longer works. They should be able to isolate the problem from there. Hopefully that helps.