The general arguments here are that CDNs have replaced tier1 ISPs as the predominant force on the Internet. Geoff Huston has written about this over the last ~10 years[0][1].

So the question as to alternatives is void - the problem is CDNs MitM'ing yur datas across multiple domains, and the loss of the nostalgia (or whatever) for the tier1 ISPs (who were all horrible in their own ways).

I don't particularly subscribe to the harms Geoff purports, but I cannot fault his analysis of the situation. If you haven't read it before, it is worth the read.

If you want a free and open Internet, then you don't want someone else's TLS proxy between every consumer and every producer. This ignores the problems of DDoS, scaling, etc. Buuutttttt.... 99% of websites don't have those problems, so why are you building a solution which trades decentralization for it?

Anyhow, sounds like you're into all the wonderful things Cloudflare (and every other CDN) provides. Great. That's fine, just don't be angry when the free and open Internet promised to all of us in the 1990s requires 3rd party gate keepers. And no, there aren't solutions to all the problems.

0: https://blog.apnic.net/2016/10/28/the-death-of-transit/ 1: https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/internet-report-evolution-...