I cant tell you when or where as its sporadic but every now and then I enter a station sector and the toplist and radar are empty even tho I am in amongst a swarm of bots all trying to dock

Does it happen after periods of AFKness or bot-like behavior? Because that sounds like the anti-bot measures.

no it happens randomly while trading between stations

I've had that happen a few times too somewhat randomly. I've only seen it happen when jumping from one sector to another. I have NOT seen it just happen while flying around in a given sector. It feels more like a bug then a feature to me. Last time I didn't lose the toplist completely, I just couldn't click on any of the names. I could however manually target ships by pointing at them and hitting the mouse button I have bound for that. I do not remember if I lost radar as well.

I'll try and note the time and location next time it happens. I will also try sorting the toplist by name and then distance to see if the list gets re-arranged. It doesn't happen often. As I think on it, it seems almost like some sessions it happens every 10 to 20 minutes and other sessions it won't happen for hours and hours on end. I'm kind suspecting that something isn't being loaded correctly.

Docking and re-launching fixes it every time so far, though jumping to another sector does not. I will also try a ReloadInterface() in the console next time to see what effect it has. My best estimate is this started about 3 weeks ago. At least that's when I first noticed it.