Hotlinking:
also known as
Inline linking.
As noted in the article linked to, linking to an image or video costs a certain amount in bandwidth- not just disk space, which is static, but amount of disk transfer over the lines in a certain time- and the company hosting the image, be it a large one like Photobucket or a small local ISP in your area, pays for this- in an agreement with another provider "up the line", usually- and generally so do you, in some way, in some sense. A simple sense, like unavailability of the image if it's called on too often, as with Photobucket;
a little more complicated for me- if my bandwidth costs at the site I have an account on exceed a certain (largish, but that's for -every- file combined on the site over a month's time, not for any one file) amount, then the kind of account I have gets upgraded from personal to business, and the rates get upgraded from there on in- yay!...
So--- these little cutesy finesses, classing videos as jokes, tracks as videos, etc. so that every single item will open the moment the stash opens
... instead of the stash reader's having to open just the individual items that they want to see and only those items...
which is one of the points of the recent changes, near as I can tell -
- "halved by being too clever" was funnier the first time I heard it, but "shooting yourself in the foot" is better. Use the new system, don't try to cheat it.