I’m fairly certain this is a (positive IMO) side-effect of this change:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/15675
The hot-linked image links were showing up in the Top Links section of user summaries and looked pretty awful. I didn’t realize it would take the click count off of hotlinked images in posts too, but I personally think that is an improvement as well for reasons like what @JammyDodger illustrated. The click counter was often distracting and felt out of place on images.