@JimS123 I was kidding about it coming on a CD. It was a throwback to 1995 when AOL was dominant and spammed our (real) mailboxes with AOL dialup free trials. I also recently changed my Mom's ring tone to say "you've got mail". ;-) ... My daughter had changed mine to a klaxon alarm and gave me the idea.
Much like M$FT's new Edge browser, it looks like AOL uses the google Chromium framework for their embedded browser that is the basis of their AOL Desktop Gold. The problem is that their software is behind a paywall. I created a
Curtiboats@aol.com account but i can't troubleshoot a "browser" that i can't access. AOL won't let me download it without a subscription. I have versions of Chrome and Chromium running on MacOS, IOS, Android, Win10 and Ubuntu and i can't replicate any of the issues you're having.
I searched clearing cookies and cache on AOL Desktop Gold and came across this. It might be worth trying.
https://help.aol.com/articles/using-the-web-in-aol-desktop-gold
We are going to be running another security/feature update in the next week or so but that shouldn't change much. Perhaps it will force your software to reset something. IDK.