I'm finally able to sum up what is frustrating for me about the change ... I have a lot of threads I'm subscribed to for reference, but which I don't visit everytime there is an update. I know that they're there and it tells me when something new is posted.
With this "enhancement", I am forced to visit each of those threads just to get them to drop off My FT list and if lots of people are posting to one of them, there can be multiple unneeded visits going on. An example of this is the UA web issues thread. I know it's there, I'm interested in what is being posted, but I have no need of reading every post to the thread. I look at it when I feel like it but now I HAVE to visit it, or go to the UA forum and click the forum as read, or click all forums as read, even if they aren't just to reset the dang list.
I likely can grow accustomed to this new method, but I won't ever like it.
I really wish that IB would have a user experience group with real users, beyond the moderators, and make use of those folks before rolling "enhancements" out to us or coming up "ideas" they think might be beneficial but which they really don't understand. It is glaringly obvious that IB continues to lack understanding of Flyertalk, the community and how this board is used by its members.