Interesting. In one of the split off topics, they point out that the dots or unread count can now be set by users. It can be found under Preferences>Sidebar>Navigation. I wish it could be set as default by admin. Users on my instance are not tech savvy and would never find that setting or know it exists.
Both here on meta.discourse and on my instance it looks like the following for me, in grey text.
I think they are much easier to see with some other color text.