I've yet to see a iOS or macOS content blocker that doesn't use multiple filter rules to bypass the 50k limit.
If the 50k limit isn't sufficiently high, I don't think, "they're trying to restrict blockers, but don't worry they're bad at it" is a great defense. And if the 50k limit is high enough, and it's a reasonable tradeoff between privacy and performance, then why are content blockers putting in extra work to bypass it?
Should we expect that Apple will block the limit workaround in the future?
Without a limit, developers would probably default to a massive append-only list that takes a minute to compile.
With a limit, developers have to shard their rules which lets them at least compile them in parallel. For example, you need to recompile the list if you want to support on-the-fly customizations like "whitelist this site."
> when Apple rolled out the new Content Blocker API, it enforced a maximum limit of 50,000 rules for each new extension that wanted to block content inside Safari.
Check again? You're probably thinking of how classic extensions used to work.