I agree about the Steem projects and trending. Unfortunately, it is hard to avoid. People want to let people know when something new is available, and trending is best for that, but on the other hand, we don't want trending full of Steem meta.

I think communities will help a lot in that regard, you can subscribe to a Steem meta community to know what is going on without having trending flooded. We are a ways off from that and we still don't really know how communities will work so there is no guarantee there either.