Ask Facebook to return GIFs to auto-play instead of links

Recently Facebook adopted the ability to search various GIF generating websites and post GIF image reactions directly to the comment sections. (If you don't know what a GIF is please refer to bottom paragraph) It has been very useful and pioneered a new way to react to a post and convey more emotion and context using animation than simply just a text, emoji or photo/meme. As of today though, Facebook changed it from automatically generating and playing the GIF in the comment section and instead, inconveniently posts a link with a small thumbnail where the user has to click it in order to see the GIF play out. I know many users including myself thoroughly enjoyed the new addition of GIFs as a great way to connect even more with our friends and others more easily. GIFs also are able to more conveniently convey our emotion and reactions to their posts. They containing relatable, and iconic scenes/moments from some of our favorite and medias such as TV shows, movies and much more. Because of this it gives users a more interactive, and emotional connection to the GIFs. But I believe the new change from auto-playing the image to links allows them to be more easily overlooked as well as potentially ignored all together. I believe one of main the reasons for this, other than simply laziness is because many frequent internet and Facebook users have been conditioned to ignore links especially because they can contain viruses or redirect you to unwanted websites. Since the introduction of Facebook, even back to MySpace times, there have been many malicious links circulated that can give you viruses, steal personal information and even cause your Facebook account to be hijacked. The worst is when they hijack an account and post or send links to friends, whom are trusted, In order to entice and trick more people to click them. Since it's been a thing for a while, people have become conditioned to be wary of clicking links, even if it's from a friend. So all in all we thoroughly enjoyed the new addition of GIFs and for the reasons explained we are asking that Facebook reconsider changing the ability to post GIF comments back to their previous function of auto-playing instead of the link with thumbnails. Please sign this petition so we can show them how many people want them back to their orininal glory and tell them we are dissatisfied with the new linked GIFs! *EDIT*: it was brought to my attention they possibly changed it to help conserve phone data, if so then we ask that they develope a way to toggle the setting in order to have it link or auto-play in order to allow users to decide for themselves. *

For those of you don't know a GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format and is a small collection of image frames from a video that is able to play out (without sound) in a formate function similar to a photo. In short a GIF is a small video that plays on a loop, but looks like a photo.