Assuming you're not looking at the file sizes involved...
replySWF is extremely compact, since it was intended to be used over a dialup connection. Flash worked because the player was preinstalled on the computer.
The newer Ruffle player is a 10MB download in addition to the actual flash file. You get a new freshly downloaded copy of Ruffle from every site that's hosting Flash content.
> Assuming you're not looking at the file sizes involved
replyThe internet has very much moved on.
A three minute, 1080p YouTube music video encoded in AV1 video with Opus audio is 30 megabytes. No one bats an eyelash at downloading that.
To prove it, this one has been downloaded 2.6 billion times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekr2nIex040
To even further prove it, this one has been downloaded 17 billion times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w