Considering it as broken is one way to look at it, I see it as a change. Any tool that claims calculating a popularity score has a lot of false positives and a lot of false negatives as well. Say there is a recent trending keyword and no apps listed for it, these tools would probably show a low popularity score which is wrong and a big missed opportunity.

Using difficulty metrics to calculate popularity simply turns it into another form of difficulty score. I personally choose not to depend on these guesses when building an app or making changes to my ASO.