> An animated image (an image that contains some sort of video media, whether gif or h264 or whatever) is a hint to the browser to play it automatically and wit

> An animated image (an image that contains some sort of video media, whether gif or h264 or whatever) is a hint to the browser to play it automatically and without sound. If everything were true video (say, mp4) you couldn’t make that distinction. <video autoplay muted> says the same thing.