No it really doesn't. How are you the product when Cloudflare gives you free tier access? That's not their business model. You aren't the product, but you are an upsell lead for the sales team.

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grayhatter 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Sales teams don't pay for leads? If you keep me around, exclusively because the sales team wants to show me something... I'm the product.

Follow up question, if I actually start using the DDoS protection or other services... will cloudflare cut me off unless I pay? Will that charge be exorbitant? Does that behavior feel like extortion? Have they done that before?

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terminalshort 4 hours ago | parent [-]

If the Cloudflare free tier TOS allows them to sell your data then I would agree that "you are the product". IDK if it does, but I would put my money on no.

I have only used CF at the enterprise level so IDK if DDoS protection is free tier. Surprise billing like that is bad behavior, but it's not "you are the product" behavior.

	▲	grayhatter 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Facebook also doesn't sell your data, but you're definitely still the product when they provide a free service in order to capture attention? > [...] but it's not "you are the product" behavior. Discarding the context for the thread, probably. But if we're discarding context, "you're removed when you start to consume resources" isn't you're the customer behavior either. Maybe, it's you're the patsy behavior?