There seems to be a convention here where photos belonging to others are text-linked, not hot-linked. But I would much rather see the image in Q&As than have to click through links that are critical to understanding the content of a question or answer.
Related discussion (from 3 years ago): Should we disallow hot-linking?
My impression is that hot-linking in general has become much less problematic and discouraged than it was a few years ago. For example, I posted this reverse-engineering question How can one capture gun bore shots? and the subject photo is in Flickr, which has no problem with hotlinking since they provide a Share URL with every photo.
Further: Could the answer to this question, even if merely guidance, be included in https://photo.stackexchange.com/help/asking?
