Facebook Starts Supporting Animated GIFs - Forbes
The only discrepancy I see in this article is that FB has already been allowing GIF upload into FB messages via desktop for a little while now. It does take a few minutes to upload and convert and isn't entirely worth the wait in my opinion.
The point is, even though you can still control auto-play for GIFs like you can videos, this is another example of how things change without people really noticing or thinking about why their data use just spiked.
