I believe just passing through external images is the way to go, it’s always the one I opt for it I can

Hosting those images is gonna get expensive and that kinda sucks for a donation run platform when that money could be far better spent elsewhere

I think also using external image sources is more in line with the idea of decentralisation, Lemmy isn’t an image host it’s a link aggregator and forum - I believe most image hosting sites will be far better at loading images quickly than Lemmy’s implementation could ever be