I have been an active flickr user for about 18y, and a pro member for probably 15.
It is, by a large margin, the most under rated photo sharing site today. They have always been friendly to hotlinking, as long as you link back to flickr itself, and the majority of the images that I have been including in my posts are creative commons licensed, hotlinks.
Like this one from John Scalzi
Sunset 10/23/23 by John Scalzi on Flickr
The only challenge that I have is that it is really annoying to convert the BBcode (OG internet BB markup) to markdown, but that little inconvenience is worth it.
Where do you get your images?
A while back everything that I posted was out of my camera, and I would just upload to the peakd back end, but I think that using the beauty of the internet and interlinking everything is a lot better than relying on the single frontend, so I started linking to flickr. But then I started not liking my photos, so I would search on flickr and find CC images that I liked and felt fit the post and the habit is formed.