Bitcoin in the old days did not use to do this.
It has been always the same.
You have been always able to use any address as the change.
The change address can be the address you send the fund from or it can be a different address.
Take note that whether the change is sent to a new address or the same address, it doesn't make any change to transaction fee.
When it comes to transaction fees, it doesn't matter whether you have received 100 UTXOs on a single address or 100 UTXOs on 1000 different addresses.
For me this has not increased privacy at all, I can see where all my funds are being transfered to on the blockchain its public???
Let me explain how reusing an address can harm people's privacy.
Assume that I have received some fund from person A and now person B wants to send me some fund.
If I give the person B the same address as the one I gave to person A, person B can know how much bitcoin I have received before.
If I give the person B a new address, there is no way for him/her to check my previous transactions.
It has only increased fees not privacy in my case!
Again, it doesn't any change to transaction fee.
Transaction fee depends on number of inputs and outputs. It doesn't the number of addresses that determines the transaction fee.