You are correct. I just don't think that's a reasonable state of affairs. If that was part of a p2p model (eg. torrent/IPFS) it could be considered a reasonable

You are correct. I just don't think that's a reasonable state of affairs. If that was part of a p2p model (eg. torrent/IPFS) it could be considered a reasonable tradeoff to allow for more eco-friendly (shorter routes, no need for high-powered servers) retrieval scheme. Hyperlinks are the foundation of the web. However, when we started loading resources (eg. images) from third parties due to high bandwidth/disk cost, we opened a Pandora's box which i believe does more harm than good.