I mean, i remember a lot of posts about people using them for stalking. It's unclear if this has been addressed or if the concern has been deprioritized, or if apple solved the problem somehow.

I mean it was enough of a concern that Android added a "detect airtags" feature to the base android OS.

Apple had its version of "stalking detection" (that equivalent of Android's "detect airtags") from early rollout. (There's a screenshot in the attached article even.) Some of the scrutiny and early complaints was that ecosystem divide that needed Android to also support at least a basic form of that same feature before people would feel safe, and everyone knew that Apple themselves weren't going to build the Android version.