I didn't see any pitchforks, it was just a question.

Surprising or not, they do. I suppose some people may feel as you do, but many do not. Many of our customers look at us as a resource for how best to use the Infrastructure we offer as a Service and share a great deal of detail.

Large operations always tend to communicate with their service providers at some level.

Likewise I imagine these types of companies tend to generate some level of complaint from sellers to the provider. They are really aggressive bots that can create attack level traffic spikes, and break a sellers TOS (snicker) in some cases.

People call on the telephone and discuss their plans, requirements, and business models before signing up. Often, once they are customers they may discuss with us ways to optimize. We check in from time to time and often they call us about their upcoming efforts to see if we have input. Of course there are some that we don't hear from at all, but whose web site at their email domains clearly spell out their businesses.

I should add that some sites (especially ones counting on ad revenue, or that don't want "scalpers") may consider bots hitting them as abusive and will either contact us or just block specific IPs. At that point we know what is going on. Our customer may call us because "it stopped working" when they have been blocked or rate limited. I will point out that many sites that bots hit do not care at all and know it is happening.

Ha don't jump to conclusions so quickly. We spend > $50k/mo on AWS and you better believe our solution architects deeply understand our product and architecture.