I clicked on the media upload button under the ‘url’ input, uploading the gif to Lemmy. It then shows up as a video on Lemmy. So I wanted the gif to show up like an image would (not in the body). The body just contains the text you see. The problem is the gif was uploaded as an video and shows up as a video in the thumbnail:

• You can’t expand like you would be able to with an image or with a linked gif.
• When you hover over the video the controls cover half the video.
• It doesn’t start looping until the user clicks the play button, which many will not do.

The conlusion is that if I want post a gif I should post a link to a gif uploaded somewhere else and not upload the gif to Lemmy.