It seems that it’s set somewhere to download local copies of pictures that are linked/embedded. I’d suggest for the sake of space that this is disabled.
This is very intentional and for archival (and Google Image-Search) purposes. Remember when Dropbox changed its publicly-shared folder policy one day randomly and tons of of thread images in GeekHack, going back years, just instantly disappeared? This removes that external dependency and means content will actually hang around here. When it comes to instructional photos, that’s important.
There’s also nothing worse than forums filled with nothing but spammy/dead Photobucket links. 
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Hmm, that’s true. I was concerned that if it was unintentional it could lead to issues. This makes sense though and I’ll just have to get used to getting notifications for my links getting adjusted :3
The only issue I see is that it can make hosting logistics complicated/expensive over time. I’ve had this experience on the other Discourse forum that I help run. But, like so many things we’re triaging right now, that’s a bridge we can cross when we come to it. 
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is there a way to leverage cheap data storage like AWS or something on “inactive” post to help spread the cost?
ie no updates in 3 months move it to this “partition”
Maybe keeping lower res versions locally with linked higher res versions on cheaper storage could work as well.
I’ve been accumulating build logs with photos on my self-introduction page, and the next one is likely to have just enough photos that I was considering putting those on imgur and linking instead, even though I think that makes for a slightly inferior read. But it sounds like for the time being I should just keep doing what I’m doing?