It will notify you that it is approaching a traffic control, and if you do not confirm that you want to proceed through, it will slow to a stop. Presumably the idea is this is safer than blowing through an intersection accidentally, which seems reasonable.

You do not have to confirm if there is a car in front of you or it sees other cars proceeding through the intersection.

I think it (stopping at traffic controls) works quite well for a feature that rolled out only a few months ago. The article is generally accurate, but almost all these features are still labeled "beta" and work pretty well, though certainly not perfectly. The idea is they will improve over time and eventually get there, the article kind of assumes they are all supposed to be flawless which I don't think is particularly accurate.

If you interpret "Full Self Driving" as "everything works flawlessly" it's going to be a disappointment. That's fair enough for a naive reading of the phrase, you can argue that's overselling the potential of the feature, but perfect driving at this time is not what is actually claimed.

I think on balance all these features are pretty positive and designed smartly so that the driver can understand what is happening and correct the car's actions, and it does seem like they are improving over time.