Exactly. Every video has to be transcoded on upload, then stored for both fast delivery and then shifted to long-lived-but-cheaper storage after a set time period. There’s nothing trivial about it.

The only reason to give it away for free is if that allows them to ship the app with video-based ads — but it’s pretty much impossible for advertising to coexist with a decentralised messaging protocol.

And as a regular Bluesky user, I don’t miss gifs or video — it massively reduces the mindless attribution-free reposting of popular TikTok videos you see on Twitter, IG and (now increasingly) Threads.

I'm perfectly prepared to do that as I did yesterday with Add Link Card BUT I need bluesky to SHOW the damn .gif and not have users have to click on a URL!!!

It's a one second change.