I don’t recall so. I could be wrong though, but the fact they updated it suggests there has been changes.
It brought people, and it facilitated having multiple accounts at one hand.
At the other hand, Bli² previous team’s numbers were dwindling until they were replaced by Vicarious, and so it is unknow if anyone is still there to read the reports and enforce sanctions.
As a result, the game is still alive, but toxicity grew stronger. 
There might be a contradiction between the first and the second assertion here. If freelose-smurfing is despicable, then freelosing is despicable whatever the reason. I mean you don’t need to stomp on people with worse mechanics to try-out one build, on the contrary. You can completely train vs IA or in customs, and then at your real level.
I’ve heard that excuse a handful of times, and from people who had just as much freeloses as regular freelosing-smurfs in fact. 
That 1/15 (=6%) is also probably inaccurate. Smurfing varies among the leagues, and probably according to some other factors, and so your subjective impressions of a low smurfing might be just as wrong than the one of people who see smurfs everywhere.
You might remember I had performed a randomized study on the matter, and for the metal leagues it was around 21.5% of smurfs. And :
- This hides locally important discrepancies. For example, if you’re a bronze 3 player, you’re gonna get trolled by about 50% of the players around. Think about it, that’s massive.
- that was in 2020 ; with the game becoming less attractive, it might’ve increased since then (more stagnating/bored/toxic users over less newcomers).
True. Not to mention the individual performance can also vary wildly depending on the match-up. So in otherwords, the gaming history is the only way to make sure a player is a smurf.