Well firstly - this isn't a huge issue on topic pages, is it? What topic page apart from maybe AIBU has so many fast moving topics that folks are bothered about the page staying static when they go back to it?
I agree that it's annoying when you're on Active, click into a thread and then try to go back to Active and the list has updated.
But to further my point about this being an annoying thing copied from more "social media-y" type sites, rather than a forum feature, isn't this constantly refreshing display ALSO the point, aka a feature, not a bug, of the social media feed, rather than a conversation LIST?
It seems to me these are simply different things.
Social media site centred around mainly images and links with some text posts = lots of change, users typically want lots of new things to see, not the same old things again and again (I don't, personally, want this, but appreciate that in general people find it engaging, and if you're aiming for mostly images that people can consume without engaging deeper then it DOES make sense to have a constantly refreshing list). Honestly, not what I come to MN for.
Whereas forum = organised (ish) space for discussion, predominantly text based and subject and/or time organised, so the list is supposed to stay static. Typical user behaviour is to scan down the list of titles for something interesting, earmark 3-4 and then pick one of these, click through to it, engage with the thread if they want to, then return to the list with the intention of finding the next one that they had earmarked and open that, in the process perhaps noticing another 1-2 threads, and repeat.
To me, MN is a discussion forum, not an image and link based sharing site. And the major problem I see with going in this direction is that if you want this kind of thing then you need pages that are going to churn out loads and loads of content so that people can "follow" them so that their constantly-refreshing feed makes sense and doesn't run out of content. But well firstly who even wants that on MN, surely the point is that you interact with real people, not a load of vacuous influencers building a brand, and secondly who is going to make a profile for people to follow them on MN when they can already do that on various larger, more international, more popular websites like tiktok, facebook, instagram, tumblr, X etc.
I know that discussion forums are considered old fashioned, but I like them. And more to the point, so do most people here, or we wouldn't be here in the first place!