If you're going to post a link that includes no clue as to what it is about -- PLEASE also include some text explaining what it is. Clicking on bare links that give no indication as to what the blazes they are about is really suboptimal. This includes links to other Mastodon posts and many other kinds of sites. Text like "Wow!" or "Interesting!" or similar really aren't that useful in this regard. Thanks!
On some links the browser pulls in an image and headline text from the link target, providing the sort of preview information you seek. But on some links this does not happen automatically. I have found that if I click the "bookmark" button at the bottom of the post, it usually then pulls the preview in where I can see it.
(In making that happen I click the "bookmark" button a second time to re-remove it from my bookmarks)
People should not have to work harder to see the preview -- the browser should display it automatically. Sometimes it does, but often it doesn't. That sounds like a bug to me, but maybe it's intentional as a way to conserve bandwidth.
The "bug" behavior could be dependent on what client (browser or app) you run. I offered the bit about clicking the "bookmarks" button as a workaround to the missing preview. Adding redundant additional text along with the link is another workaround.
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