Cloudflare does not have a monopoly on internet hosting, or even just web application firewalls or DDoS protection. The only thing different about them is that:

1. They have a moderately generous free tier, which they'll aggressively try to upsell you out of the moment they smell money in your wallet.

2. They have an anti-censorship policy that is indistinguishable from the policies of a "bulletproof" hosting company, which means all the DDoS vendors they protect you from are also paying Cloudflare.

This leads me to believe that Cloudflare's protection is less "stringent defense of free speech" and more "you wouldn't want something to happen to that precious website of yours, right?" Like, there's no free speech argument for keeping DDoS vendors online - it's a patently obvious own goal. If someone is selling censorship as a service, then it's obvious, at least to me, that silencing them and them alone would actually make others more free to speak.