Back when b2evolution showed referral stats publicly a lot of spammers sent fake hits to a site to get listed as referrers (and get backlinks to their sites). So, the blacklist looks at HTTP_RERERER and if it matches a url on the blacklist, the hit is turned away. The referers from spammers are faked, so you're not turning away any real readers. Just spam hits.
Back when b2evolution showed referral stats publicly a lot of spammers sent fake hits to a site to get listed as referrers (and get backlinks to their sites). So, the blacklist looks at HTTP_RERERER and if it matches a url on the blacklist, the hit is turned away. The referers from spammers are faked, so you're not turning away any real readers. Just spam hits.