Hello, I also observe the mentioned behavior, on two different management-domains (private and company). What’s more, when starting apt-dater, the group for „refresh required“ does not show a + sign: It’s also empty. Im using a shared setup (used by me alone, though) which worked all the way from Debian 8 until now. The mentioned behavior started with the Update auf Debian 10.
HTH. :wq! PoC