Yes, I think it is important to distinguish what Scrivener does from the concept of a “back-link”, as a popular concept of the automated feature many software tools provide. It certainly is not that. It is a static and editable record of cases where something was actively linked. Copying and pasting links, splitting, duplicating, none of these things qualify for that action.
If you are aware of that design point, it is easy enough to trigger the condition if that is what you want, on the new item.
The advantage of this approach is that one key word from above, editable. You have control over the list, rather than it being full of chaff that may be of no importance to you, just because the machine found references.
This is not a new topic however, and here are a few existing threads and thoughts on these concepts: