I created a fresh vault to test backlinks (with no community plugins) and I cannot get backlinks to display at the bottom of my page anymore. (I have the display-at-bottom option selected.)
Backlinks are still displaying fine on the right sidebar.
I don’t think this was broken. Seems to be working fine for me in 1.7.4. But glad it’s working properly for you now.
Next time, please follow the bug report template. Thanks!