Hi, in the early days (before any release), there was a read status. Some feedback I got was that "mark as read" and "archive" seemed redundant and a bit confusing. I then chose to keep only the archive part and leave it as a manual process. At the end of an article, just click on the archive button and it'll disappear from the unread section.
I agree that it's not ideal to have an "unread" section that should be named "not archived" 🙂
I might add an option so you can decide that anything that's been scrolled to the end should go to the archive. I know I won't use it but I'm not the only user anymore 🙂