Cloudflare sits in a privileged choke-point of the internet, peering into traffic others can’t. Now they’re playing hall monitor, publicly wagging their finger at Perplexity for “stealth crawling.” If Perplexity’s a customer, they should be furious at the breach of trust; if not, this smells like a cheap sales pitch dressed up as public service. Who appointed Cloudflare as Miss Manners of the web, or deputised them as law enforcement?