It drives traffic offsite when it needs not.
Often, this traffic will enrich the clever blogger.
I don't support this site to provide advertising for blogs.
Is that answer enough?
Linking to outside sources (as would be required to allow people to see a video, for instance) will drive traffic offsite also - only to 20 different places instead of to the one blog. If traffic is going to be driven off-site anyway, why do you begrudge Freepers the option of being “driven” to a site that has all the information collected for them in one place, instead of to 20 different places?
The posts I have posted here have driven FAR more traffic TO Free Republic than they have driven to my blog. By a LOT. Free Republic is benefitting FAR more from my content than my blog numbers are benefitting from Free Republic. And that’s fine with me because I’m not posting information in order to get hits to my blog; I gain nothing from hits to my blog. I’m posting information because I want my country back, like most of the people here at Free Republic. A motive you don’t seem to understand at all.