You're missing the technical difference in visibility. Now: Arbitrary data is buried in witness fields, requiring special software to decode and view. With 4MB OP_RETURN: The data sits plainly in a standard output. Any node parsing the chain can see it without special explorers. It’s the difference between data being technically present versus being unavoidably visible. And that's a huge difference. Don't sugarcoat it.

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No, Bitcoin Core won’t parse or preview images, even with 4MB OP_RETURN. But with the larger limit, you could embed big text art or ASCII images right in a transaction, making complex visuals from letters and symbols possible on-chain, way beyond what was doable before. Only actual images/binary would still require extraction to view as pictures; however, it's only logical to expect popular block explorers to quickly add binary extraction features for user convenience.