Nah, this has existed for a long time. But frontends have not implemented it yet (a few months? or is it years ago? time fly). Then the short content posts arrived and this became a no brainer (this also exists on normal posts, and that was visible for a long time).

People may decide to burn author rewards if they do not intend or feel they should be compensated for what they are saying on chain. And/Or if they feel the value of HIVE is too low, and from the pool of rewards that gets generated on every block, Burn them instead of making them go to some other user. It's a choice... and because now most frontends implemented that choice, the context can rapidly change on every comment. Which makes sense, like for example on this one to you, I am not burning any author rewards and if you want to vote for what I am saying, you can.

People can still vote for the comment, and they will receive their curation rewards, but the author ones, I am making the decision, in that particular case, to burn them. I know it does almost nothing in practical terms, but it is a message.

Hope this helps describe why I am trying to create awareness of it.

As usual, a pleasure! 💖