Me too! I was playing my Survival world and turned on the Vibrant Visuals. With the 24 chunks it was beautiful. Perfect. No lagging, it was smooth like butter and from my Castle I could see a nearby village that is around 22 chunks away. Then the other day I went back and it was 12...... TWELVE!? That's even less than 16 chunks with normal settings. Why would they change it? People are not that dumb to think: "Hey it's kinda laggy, so I'll try to turn Down the render distance." And not just lower it down for everyone based on stupid statistics.
Having similar problems on PS4. Posting pictures or videos may help get this noticed more