I'm pretty sure what you're describing is this long-standing bug[1] I've experienced only when using Mobile Safari on Reddit - affecting both old.reddit.com and the (horrible) modern Reddit. It just doesn't happen in other browsers/engines except on iOS. It's especially annoying on an iPad when I tend to use back/forward instead of open-in-new-tab-then-close on iPhone.

[1] At least, I hope it's a bug.

News sites are doing it too. Displaying a full display ad when you try to leave

I do not see this behaviour on the latest version of Firefox. I do use old.reddit, however.

I usually find the back button just doesn't work on new Reddit at all.

IIRC Reddit is also doing the same thing on their mobile (Android) app.

When I intentionally want to read something that is what I do. However once in a while I'm scrolling, selecting a window, or some other activity; and I happen to click on a link: instead of whatever action I intended I end up on a new page I didn't want to read (maybe I will want to read it, but I haven't go far enough cognitively to realize that). That is when I want my back button to work - a get out of here back to where I was.

I have always done this, although mostly so I don’t have to reload the page I am coming from when I hit the back button.

given the level of hostility most businesses have towards their customers, we should probably be opening links in disposable virtual machines

This is the way. People think I am eccentric for the number of tabs I keep open.

>I've taken to opening anything in a new tab.

this is the way.

I do that everywhere, but it seems to fail for LinkedIn: they don’t redirect the link if it’s not in the same tab.

> Closing the tab is my new back button.

In Safari if you open a new tab, don't navigate anywhere, and click back, the tab closes and takes you back to the originating page. I've gottent so used to it, I now miss it in any other browser

It's not valid. You went to a page. They said "no, you're actually on the feed," and then immediately navigate you to the page you'd actually intended to visit. This is that they're doing today, and it's terrible. If I go to a URL, I'm NOT going to your homepage feed. I never wanted to go there.

What do you mean "stuck with it"? I just don't use LinkedIn. Do you need it for job hunting for example?

That's not a fix. It's a workaround.

The fix is to not to implement anti-user patterns. What you're describing is a loophole around it.

> The problem is, there are two conceptions of the back button, and the browser only implements one.

In web browsers, there is only one concept.

There is no concept of "up one level in the heirarchy". If you want that make your own button in your website.

Desktop had this solved, on Windows there was and remains a distinction between "back" (history) and "up" (navigation).

Browsers actually used to have hierarchical navigation support, with buttons and all, back in the age of dinosaurs - all one had to do is to set up some meta tags in HTML head section to tell which URL is "prev"/"next"/"up". Alas, this has proven too difficult for web developers, who eventually even forgot web was meant for documents at all, and at some point browsers just hid/removed those buttons since no one was using them anyway.

The "Back" remains, and as 'Arainach wrote, it's only one concept and it's not, and never has been "up one level in the hierarchy".

EDIT:

The accepted/expected standard way for "take me up one level in hierarchy" on the web is for the page itself to display the hierarchy e.g. as breadcrumbs. The standard way to go to top level of the page is through a clickable logo of the page/brand. Neither of those need, or should, involve changing behavior of browser controls.

> one is "take me one level up the hierarchy." They're often but not always the same.

Who expects this behavior? It doesn't make sense. You just want to go back where you were. Most file browsers I've used wanting to implement going up a level in hierarchy, have an arrow pointing up.

If you reached point B from point A - and you tell someone "I would like to go back", then you are expecting to go back to A. Not some intermediate, arbitrarily chosen point C.

You're describing 2 different concepts, back and up, not 2 backs