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In what sense did it break the back button? Back takes you to the previous thing you clicked correctly.

It didn't break back. It just hijacked the browser's history by adding a 2nd page load in order to inject the "!#" into the address bar. Pressing back would, as a result, act like the refresh button.

I don't follow you. Changing the functional behavior of the back button _sounds_ a lot like broken.

I'm not sure that this is the case.

Back works as expected - it takes you to the previous page you were at. Fragment identifiers don't break the back button. That's all from a user perspective's point of view, which is mostly all that matters in the end.

If you look at this from a technical standpoint, then back is a refresh of twitter.com, yes.

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