Despite what they say, so far it seems to further reward authoritative websites, you can see this with many older websites appearing in the top positions. It seems things have become even more difficult for newer websites to succeed.
BERT – Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers – is a neural network-based technique for natural language processing and has the ability to better understand the full context of your query by looking at all of the words in your search. Google built new software and hardware to make this update happen to better serve your search results and delve deeper into the relevant information you’re seeking.
When I have questions regarding latest algorithm updates I go straight to SE Roundtable: https://www.seroundtable.com/ the guys give insights into all latest updates plus you can read the users feedback to find out what sites are affected, etc.