The scrolling is horribly lagging, and the gifs/videos are all black:
I tend to agree with your main point, especially when the bells and whistles are pointless frippery that don't actually do anything. In this case the use actually adds value to the page. I've spent a while on various websites learning more about the Silk Road history, and about the current geo-political stuff.
It's a pity the media experience isn't consistent across browsers.
But it'd be nice to be able to say, "Yes, this version in chrome is what I want it to look like," and you get back scores that determine how "close" the other versions are to the version you selected as your reference (0-100%?).
Seems like one could achieve this with some sort of pixel diff algorithm.