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Everyone and their mother blocks back buttons. Major news sites do it. There is no way that's what's ranking them this high.

Sites should be punished into oblivion for doing this. Why do browsers even allow it? Is there a legitimate use-case for this?

I am maintaining an SPA and the only thing I do is trying to not pollute history. But I'd never try to block the back button.

I think a legitimate use-case is asking for confirmation before leaving the page when filling out a form so that the user doesn't loose their data.

But this can be achieved with other means. I have exactly this on my SPA.