The Trending feed is built from visits: projects people actually opened, counted over a recent window. Changing the sort while you are on Trending does not throw that away.
What the sort actually does
Picking a sort applies it first and keeps visit count as the tie-breaker. Sorting Trending by Most Liked gives you the most-liked projects, and where two have the same number of likes, the more-visited one comes first.
This is why Trending sorted by Most Recent is not the same list as the Most Recent feed. On Trending you are still only seeing projects that are getting visits; the sort rearranges that set rather than replacing it.
The sorts that behave this way
- Most Liked
- Most Recent
- Top Rated
- Most Commented
Each one is applied ahead of visits, with visits deciding ties.
When you want the plain list instead
If you want all projects by likes or by date, without the trending filter, use the main Projects feed and sort there. Trending is deliberately a narrower set.
Why it works like this
A tie on likes or comments is common, especially on newer projects where the numbers are small. Without a second sort those ties would come back in an arbitrary order that could change between page loads, so the same project could appear twice as you paged, or not at all. Visits give a stable answer.