I never implied there was a reward system or value transfer (unless you count the feel-good reward of sharing knowledge with others and the value of doing so).

I said that putting things on the Internet is not, and has never been, "free".

And I think that's what Cloudflare is saying too.

You're free to interpret it differently (as was OP) but I think you're wrong. ;-)

CloudFlare is definitely implying there's always been a reward systems and value transfer at play, that's there in the quoted text and what the OP is complaining about