As a result of changes made in T306883, users on the Wikipedias now see thumbnails for articles in the search results on Special:Search. Sometimes these thumbnails are non-free, fair use images. There is some concern in the en.wiki community that non-free images shouldn't be used as thumbnails in this context.
Note that these are the same thumbnails used in the Go bar autocomplete and search on mobile, and that page previews also use images with any license.
This ticket will track:
[x] Conversations with WMF legal about what is permitted under fair use
[x] Coordination with the various teams at WMF about the affected interfaces were we to change this to disallow non-free images
[x] Consideration of how the change would affect the images shown in Search Preview T306341
Update: We will be disabling fair use thumbnails in the search results, in the Go bar, and in Search Previews.
Acceptance Criteria:
[] disable fair use thumbnails in the search results and in the go bar
[] disable fair use images in Search Preview
[] communication plan is in place to inform the community about this change, and to start discussions again in January