I think it’s acceptable because the alternative is authors who make this exceedingly dumb and user-hostile choice would have to see the upvotes to recognize how

I think it’s acceptable because the alternative is authors who make this exceedingly dumb and user-hostile choice would have to see the upvotes to recognize how much people hate this. Instead, if authors read a bunch of complaints about this happening with their work, perhaps they’ll learn not to do it because they’d rather read more interesting comments about their work. When 2/3 of the comments are complaining about how an author rendered user back buttons useless out of either carelessness or ignorance, I’d hope the author would pay attention.