bind ^F forward main

bind ^B back main

bind M-f nextword main

bind M-b prevword main

What did the maintainer change them to instead?

(Because tone doesn't always come across, I'm asking out of curiosity, not to like challenge you about it.)

Seems GP got somewhere confused as well. From `man nano`:

       Since  version  8.0,  to  be  newcomer  friendly, ^F starts a forward
       search, ^B starts a backward search, M-F searches the next occurrence
       forward, and M-B searches the next occurrence backward.  If you  want
       those keystrokes to do what they did before version 8.0, add the fol‐
       lowing lines at the end of your nanorc file:

           bind ^F forward main
           bind ^B back main
           bind M-F formatter main
           bind M-B linter main

M-F/B have not defaulted to nextword/prevword, or at least haven't within the last 10y since have those binds in the earliest version of nanorc in my .config git repo.

Your 10y estimate must be wrong since my nanorc only acquired these things after the nano maintainer was bullied out.