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Yes, it’s incredible how just the preview images of “related articles” are over 13 MiB in size. That’s pretty dumb.

As is using GIFs instead of actual videos. It’s 2018, damnit.

Google shot themselves in the foot there though - autoplay videos are / can be disabled, but with gifs that's a bit more difficult and / or gifs are a way to force people to get exposed to videos.

Maybe they could change Chrome to allow autoplay videos, which have no audio? Would make them very much functionally equivalent to GIFs.

I've taken to blocking gifs due to abuse.

Mostly just transparent-until-hover, but still.

https://pastebin.com/m5CEVfhL

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