And a lot of things that are "animated gifs" really aren't animated gifs anymore, they're using audioless video players. So if you stopped autoplay, everything from gfycat, imgur, and similar would stop playing.
So everyone ITT saying that “nobody wants automatically playing videos”. Actually yeah, we do, and there are many, and I mean MANY of us.
There are probably uses that I'm not thinking of (or don't partake in) where this would still be a problem for people.
But I do have a lot of friends that spend time browsing facebook, and not a single one likes autoplaying videos, either wanted or unwanted ones.
Videos do not get into your screen at the same exact time you focus your attention on them. On the occasion that you'll want to watch the video, autoplaying just forces you to see a lot of out of context spoilers and video endings.
I don't think "makes imgur gifs stop playing" is going to attract more users than it drives away. By all means have that as an option, but it'd be a terrible default experience.
Firefox 57 changed to using a more limited extension system like Chrome already had, so it's not like users could jump ship to Chrome to get back Firefox 56's more powerful extensions.
You may not have liked or agreed with that change, but I don't think it actually drove people to alternative browsers. If anything they might have said "Well, I have to going extension browsing anyway to find new ones that work, maybe I'll take a look at the options in Chrome too."
This seems like an assertion in advance of evidence.
To be sure, the entire internet-using public does not get a vote on the issue, aside from browser configurations and plugins (which the people who deny us a vote pay PR agencies to hate). Just like in other instances of disenfranchisement, those who aren't allowed to vote are indeed considered to be "minorities," even if only in the amount of political power they wield.
Basically, what bothers me is that most of software being developed nowadays treats users like shit and the excuse is always along the same lines: "We ensure that we do what users want, by measuring their response, and if they didn't like it they would use something else".
Turns out, you can't go anywhere else if everything is corrupted through same perverse incentives and you don't have the power to change it yourself. Back when most users were more computer-savvy, the users had more power. Obviously, we can't go back to computers being mostly a hobby for geeks, but there has to be some kind of a solution to put more power in users' hands. I just can't think of one.
Yes, this would be what I want.
Edit: Actually, it seemed to be hit-or-miss. Some gifs work, some refuse to play at all.