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I am very proud that @brave decided to base their new Rust adblocker upon github.com/cliqz-oss/adbl…, closely following our implementation and design. I think now might be a good time to reflect on the state of content blockers! #thread
This architecture was the result of lots of research and innovation to push the state of performance in @cliqz and @Ghostery and we think we reached a sweet spot in terms of efficiency: memory usage and performance are *both* great! #cakeandeatittoo
We already showed a few months ago in response to Manifest v3's announcement, how content blockers could be implemented extremely efficiently, even in #javascript, and even without #webassembly (whotracks.me/blog/adblocker…)
Since the study, all popular adblockers: @ublockorigin, @AdblockPlus, etc. also worked super hard to improve the performance even further; impacting positively virtually *all users* of adblockers on the Web! Kudos to you too guys! @100101010000 @gorhill
Now, thanks to @brave's work, we also know how fast it can get when the currently best algorithm and design is translated into a fast compiled language like Rust! #warpspeed
From what I can see, the results go along what I would expect and match past experiences; JavaScript carefully tuned for performance might still be x2 slower than Rust. (without WebAssembly)
It's also fairly impressive that a dynamic language like JavaScript can be made to run so insanely fast! Thanks to the work of many engineers continuously improving engines. #spidermonkey #v8
Last but not least, I think it gives a good benchmark that we can measure the performance of @Google's new declarative API against. It should be in the same ballpark than Brave's implementation. #manifestv3
I would also be extremely curious to know how Safari's implementation compares in terms of efficiency, since they implemented a completely different design. Anyone up for studying the performance of adblockers cross-platforms, cross-languages, cross-devices?
In the meanwhile, consider adding new adblockers or update the existing ones in our benchmarks here; PRs welcome! github.com/cliqz-oss/adbl…
