well, we know from experiments during the previous discussion that despite unproven assertions to the contrary that lots of images can slow down the loading of a thread, although I'm not convinced it's the FT servers, but rather your own computer having to access different websites around the world to retrieve the images.

But we also know that they can be turned off by users individually, although I can't remember which way the default setting is - perhaps good to ensure that default is off, so it's an opt in thing?