When you look at the Trending header on Steemit, you're actually looking at the Whale Picks on Steemit. Trending indicates that more people are voting for a post, not select individuals with huge accounts. So, trending is not exactly accurate. I think it would be more accurate to have Steemit with the Whale Picks header. It would at least be more honest and transparent:
Then, the hot category can be used for people who want to see what is getting the most votes. I have no idea how the algorithm can be fixed, but the unfair quality of Steemit, with whale accounts determining the monetary rewards for bloggers is, I think the central problem with Steemit.
I just took an informal survey from some of my friends who have abandoned Steemit for good, and one of them says the unfair rewards, with the Trending page not really meaning trending is one of the biggest reasons she left.
If we look at a very successful platform, Medium, you will notice that they have a section clearly marked at the top indicating the Editor's Picks.
The Whales on Steemit are the same as the Editors on Medium. Steemit could learn a lot from Medium about user engagement. Also, notice how inviting it is to look at on the opening page. (More on that later).
I'm currently tracking down a bunch of dead users, and so far I've found many of my friends whom I dragged in and others I used to converse with here: 
unfair voting scheme
casino-type posts getting huge rewards
lost my password
got a really good job so don't have time......
Anyway, I still feel that the skewed reward system is problematic, hindering Steemit's growth and I would like to see some work done in this area. If it was truly working well, we would not need curation guilds, and all that stuff. They are a good idea, but a solid algorithm that really showed true virality would be a much better product. I know there's the bot issue, and surely, we can figure out a solution?
I think the Whale Picks tab should be implemented, as that is exactly what the Trending page is in reality. This could be a first step in addressing the reality of rebalancing voting and rewards. At the very least, it would show what the trending page really is.
And Top Stories could be reputation-weighted popular stories that are not necessarily backed by whale votes.