They clearly don't give a shit about this problem. Similar issues with Giphy & friends. If they cared they'd de-list sites that present different data to a real user than they do to the Google bot, so that all image search results are directly accessible.
Like other bad Google behavior related to controlling web spam, I reckon this drives more people to see Google ads on these sorts of sites, so they've taken an anti-user position. Same reason much of the "legitimate" web turned up in Google results now looks like a low effort click farm—if the clicks are making Google money, who cares if it's coming from garbage content?