When I worked at Malwarebytes we had regular issues with malware being hosted on Cloudflare. Now I don't mean like "hey download this file so you can learn"- that kind of thing we fully supported. I mean that these files were being explicitly used in drive by exploit attacks- if a user with a vulnerable browser went to the wrong webpage, that webpage would load exploit scripts from the Cloudflare network and then inject the malware.
To me this is a very simple example of abusing a network. It is not a free speech issue, unless you think punching someone in the face is free speech. We proved that this was happening by providing pcap files showing the entire network transaction and the fact that users were not initiating this on purpose.
Their response was to ignore us until we started blocking their end nodes, at which point they came to our forum and straight up lied.
> Unfortunately, the new system is unlikely to resolve the current controversy which is more political than technical in nature. The current controversy involving Malwarebytes blocking CloudFlare IPs is centered around one site. To be clear, this site does not distribute malware itself and visiting it will not infect your computer. It does, however, provide information on how to create malware. Philosophically, we believe there is a difference between distributing malware -- which we will prohibit through our network -- and distributing information about malware. We do not believe our role is to play censor to any information on the Internet, even information we find disturbing. Publishing the Anarchists Cookbook does not make you a terrorist. Blocking sites based on the information they contain, as opposed to the actual harm they do, takes a step down a slippery slope I find deeply troubling.
https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/108447-my-site-using-c...
This was a 100% dishonest lie, and it's the same pattern Cloudflare has been following for a decade now. In this case they lied claiming we were blocking educational material, which is something Malwarebytes never did. He said all of this after we sent the pcap files proving that this wasn't an issue with educational sites.
From my perspective Cloudflare has always been willing to hide behind free speech even if it isn't relevant. It's their go to excuse for any bad behavior.