Significantly Less Open Challenges Than Before

When I click on Play - Play - Custom - Open Challenges, I feel that there were a lot more people playing at the same time a few days ago. Today and yesterday, I was observing this chart and how many people there are at the same time, and it seems significantly less people are playing games than just a few days ago.

For instance, before there were a lot of people with sub 1 000 rating playing unrated 15|10 or 30|0 games, while now I don't even see them playing any at all. Plus a lot less people are playing other time controls as well. From time to time, I see only 2 rapid challenges at some point in time altogether, which didn't happen before.

Is there some change I am not aware of, or is this just how it is now (though it seems odd to me that things would change this abruptly)?

Here is what I mean:

And it is like that generally, there are a little more live games happening from time to time, but significantly less than before.

The situation remains unchanged today as well. It seems to me that people from certain rating range are either completely invisible to me (perhaps much lower and higher rated) or at least most of them are.

I suspect that Chess.com received complaints from lower rated players who were paired with significantly higher rated players. My opinion is that if you don´t want to play significantly higher rated players, you should adjust the rating range before issuing a challenge. Apparently many players aren't aware that a rating range is specified, but I still think I should be able to accept challenges where an infinite rating range is specified.

I also noticed that when playing 20 sec.|1 Bullet games, which is a less popular time control, I used to normally be paired with low-rated players, but now Chess.com makes me wait until someone close to my rating is playing 20 sec.|1.

There is probably nothing we can do about this, but it's an unfortunate change because I do find it fun to sometimes play much lower or higher rated opponents.

It could be what is going on, and I agree that this is not the good solution if this is indeed the case. It is like swatting a mosquito with a baseball bat.