Cloudflare wishes it peered with everyone and steers its own astroturfing pressure groups hoping to achieve that. The economics are similar though; their major product remains DDoS sinking, so driving down the marginal cost of traffic is Cloudflare’s strategy. The difference is that the content they mediate is thereby an incentive towards peering and not the core business proposition.

The reality of these relationships is more complex especially in some markets. It's also not hard to be at the IX and benefit yourself.

Yeah and that is their point. And it's actually highly problematic just how much discount the large giants get on traffic - it effectively blocks any competitors not backed by some very deep pockets.

Is Comcast still charging content providers and CDNs for peering?