Thumbnails are bad for privacy
Exposes you to content you are not willing to see like NSFW images if they are posted(even if they are marked such for reader to know not to click to not see them) or shows you websites you would not want sometimes to ignore like propaganda websites or fishing websites that will record your IP address.
Wastes a lot of space, you can only see 3.5 messages on whole screen if each contains a link. Many IRC channels on freenode already have a bot that checks links and outputs their titles.
- Polari version: 3.36.1
- Arch Linux