Calling videos without an audio track “gifs” has been done for years now.

Yep. Imgur's GIFV [0] from 2014 is the earliest mainstream example I know of.

In the cultural consciousness, a "GIF" represents a particular medium and form factor, which has become decoupled from its namesake file format to deliver the same experience more efficiently.

[0] https://blog.imgur.com/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/

My favorite solution to this is to use GIF for the 90s encoding scheme and gif for this newer lax meaning.

Then while we’re at it, settle the pronunciation debate by picking a different one for each.

Or, more precisely, crippled video players where you can't even rewind.

ah, yes, I see, it's the no-audio that made it a 'GIF'. Fair enough. But annoying because it automatically removes seek and pause options if it assumes it's a GIF. doh.