>>31750The Internet already is very centralized or federated among a moderate number of backbone providers, depending on how you see the role of organizations like ICANN or the IETF.
Cowerflare primarily acts as a CDN and DDOS protection. The former means users access a cached version of the site on servers geographically closer to their location. Both are accomplished by configuring hosts to essentially hook into an overlay network, that is accessed through a number of local, DDOS-resistant Cloudflay servers. Consequently they control the sites DNS record, any TLS certificates for https, as well as any traffic between the site and other Internet hosts.
This is why some people call it an MITM. It's also far from an essential service. As you might know other forms of DDOS protection exist, but Cloudfer often presents itself as the path of least resistance.
tl;dr
>>31753