does it require it or provide it as an option?
as far as I know you can submit image URLs just fine. gyfcat and imgur videos are regularly on r/all.
hosting multimedia content provides a better experience. does it have downsides? yes. just with google's AMP.
a bit offtopic, but tiktok creators' fund is already shortshelling creators. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAZapFzpP64
and this endless reposting of viral content ... well, it's ongoing since we have viral content. is it great? of course not, but it's not like the reddit CDN somehow changed anything with regards to this problem.
youtube has contentID ... "creators" are free to organize and advocate for reddit/IG/tiktok to introduce it (or lobby US/EU/China to mandate it or whatever)
Content theft on the internet is as old as the internet.
Reddit has even gone as far as to prohibit posting of OC by creators themselves by banning their posts and accounts when they post their own work, calling it "self promotion", while other accounts violate the rule with obvious immunity. They also ban subreddits after they are cultivated and curated too, many times for no good reason. I understand that spam needs to be controlled, but how moderation occurs on Reddit, it's totally not conducted in a normal nor reasonable manner at all.
Edit: In addition, just recently she managed to ward off a blatant thief and finally drive traffic from another hit to herself. But the income lost to the thief in the first few days? Forget about it.
The other major subs are also filled with shallow/unsubstantial content
But if you keep out of those it is usually ok
A lot of content creators spam Reddit to get clicks and eyeballs (obviously). Some subreddits have nearly become 100% YouTube threads. As a result some subs/admins have started to craft tighter requirements for the links posted to bring some sort of balance back to the content.
Also there's always old payment methods where crypto/NFT/digital payment services or even a bag of cash can be used under the table, though nobody can or would want to prove that of course, and of course it's not presented as fact because I have no stake whatsoever in reddit nor desire to see it made less skewed like it used to be in the past.... I've already given up on it myself, long ago when they banned me for no reason and took my sub.
Look carefully at each video you watch on any platform from now on for what products, slogans, and logos are placed in them, and the links/comments that are posted in the comments. There is advertising going on in the majority of reddit posts for something, even if most people don't know it. A lot of the time, even the music used in content is often being subtly imprinted across multiple sites so that it becomes an ear worm as a low-key psychological marketing tactic.
Many major companies are putting out completely engineered "low budget" home videos as ads, they're no longer marking paid ad posts as sponsored, and companies are regularly hiring the most popular and trusted creators to inject subtle advertising cues into otherwise organic looking viral videos. I'm pretty sure that most of what we see on social platforms with paid advertising options now is either staged/funded/enlisted/sponsored production, bot driven content, or low key psychological marketing. This does not include HN based on what I've observed, because they don't sell ad-based post boosting (as far as I know).
OC creators struggle often in futility to break past algorithm ratios just to be seen by small audiences if they don't have massive sums of money to pay for advertising for each post they make on each platform. Getting to the front page without the right funding may be damn near impossible by now, fair enough though, there are a lot of other users competing against you that have copied your style, branding, and/or content, so "F" it, maybe we're all doomed/
And that is the stuff behind subs blocking youtube and the strict self-promotion rules.
Millions of creators on sites like YouTube and others never get credited or viewed even though their stolen content goes viral on bootleg accounts. It's a huge problem. Even replies and posts from other sites are hijacked for the same purposes now.
It laid the ground work for content theft going on everywhere now...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a4geZL2xmM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaEJWlAbXLk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcE8ZVG_tmo