Hold on, if a VM works then that implies they are mainly using a combination of IP address and the "User-Agent" header to identify you, which includes basically your os version and browser, and is way easier to spoof than using a virtual machine. Try this extension to change what user-agent chrome sends: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switcher-for-c/djflhoibgkdhkhhcedjiklpkjnoahfmg?hl=en-US
You can also use that to make your own user-agents, though they may validate that it's a sane looking user agent.
By default in browsers when you navigate backwards it tries to restore scroll position to where it was. But when you go back to the list, it has to reload the items and theres nowhere to scroll back to.
I think the chapo.chat devs could mitigate that issue by manually saving the scroll position to the history.state and using that to restore the scroll position after the list has reloaded.
The chapo.chats could actually make the web app feel much snappier if they saved the lists entire state to the history api and used that instead of reloading when you went back. This has the added benefit of preventing posts you might've been wanting to look at from jumping around, and reduces load on the server at least marginally.
Source: I'm a web developer. Actually maybe I'd be able to help with this.
Were you using VM combined with VPN before? If not, then no it shouldn't.