AOL tried to spread the perception it was the internet and so should be the one chosing which internet resources were available for you. It wasn't really wasn't though. It was just a small walled garden in a bigger internet.

Cloudflare on the otherhand, by it's sheer cheap utility, has inserted itself between a significant number of the top websites (and other internet services to a lesser extent) on the internet as a whole. It acts as the gateway deciding if your client is on the approved list for access the resource. It has become what AOL always hoped to be. It's almost too big to fail now and likely will enshittify it's business model all the way to AOL levels in time.