The issue I'm seeing is if you go the forum filters and uncheck the areas you don't want to see then hit accept the changes are only saved for my current browsing session when I return all my unchecked items are reset. That's the issue at my end. I don't know if it's releated to cookie's or some security setting in Firefox or possibly a site/forum bug.
No, it does not ignore the thread. It used to; it has not for a very long time due to the upgrade to a new version of vBulletin or something of the sort. It's not a bug on our side, and there's zero loss of functionality or change from where we were last week.
If you don't want to see a thread, you're welcome to ignore the forum in the recent posts list. There's absolutely no way to ignore a particular thread from showing up at all in forums / recent posts.
This is why Fun Stuff hasn't been showing on the front page for many months now; you're welcome to change your filters to ignore it to go back to how things were before filters were implemented.