[ngoel36]

I use GIFs because I want videos that act like images, not videos. GIFs I can copy & paste, and I know that they'll infinitely loop without ever showing a play/pause button.

Yes, videos are smaller, but I'm unfortunately stuck with GIFs until videos work well in Google Slides and iMessage (which also means I'm also stuck with Google Slides presentations always on the verge of crashing...)

[chrismorgan]

Meanwhile, I really wish I could instruct my browser to treat GIFs as videos, and load only the first frame and show controls if I wish to actually play it. Because >99% of GIF usage that I encounter is abuse of the format.

[adrianN]

Firefox has image.animation_mode on top of which one could probably build an extension that does what you want.