I just repost the same comment I put in the above thread
> The thing that scary me most is that his business get shut down without any notice period (at least the author not mentioning any previous communications from Cloudflare team about the issue).
> This is really a shitty thing from Cloudflare, you cannot shut down an already running business without any notice/grace period.
I don’t really feel any sympathy for that poster. They knowingly broke the rules, they had to have known that CF could come and shut them down at any time, and they still went ahead and threw the pity party knowing that they are pretty much entirely in the wrong. It’s very much a “play dumb games, win dumb prizes”.
Would it be nice for CF to give a heads up? Sure. But I don’t think it’s required, and especially not in an egregious case like that one.
They "tolerated" a non-compliant use of their service for so long time (maybe because in the past their only goal was to increase adoption?!?) and suddenly they decided to change strategy?! No problem, it's their choice, but adding an x days grace period should be the standard. It's really easy to do.
> Would it be nice for CF to give a heads up?
Well yes, it will be really welcome. Mostly for all other their user(1/3 of internet or something like this) that maybe doesn't even know there are not full-compliant to TOS and risk their business to be terminated suddenly.
Warnings are nice, but it's ultimately the user's responsibility to read and understand the TOS, what they can and can't do. Ignorance is no defense. Just because you didn't know murder is illegal does not mean you can go kill random people and claim "oopsie, I didn't know, I wish you had warned me ahead of time".
> suddenly they decided to change strategy
They never changed strategy. It has always been explicitly against the TOS and explicitly mentioned as something you can't do in their documentation. Just because someone is below the threshold for Cloudflare's automated detection does not mean CF is allowing their use. Their use is still against the terms they agreed to, it's just not detected yet. If you are doing things you know are against the TOS, like that other poster, then you should very well know that your time is limited and your access can be yanked at any point in time.
It is actually ultimately the responsibility of the company, cloudflare, to clearly communicate their rules and ToS to the users. Because they are the multi-billion dollar business, and making things clear is their responsibility.
Throwing your hands up, and blaming confusion on the user is a way to rightfully cause users to hate you, and rightfully cause you a large amount of monetary damage as people decide that your company is not worth the risk.
Or even more, a user is within their right to cause large amount of monetary damages to the company, via viral social media outrages, such as this one. PR damage is real, and is a totally valid tactic, that a large company deserves, if they are making mistakes like this.
And it seemed like the damage caused by this post was very real. Cloudflare executives are posting in this thread.
So, actually, I would say that it is not just nice, but obligated to provide warnings, elsewise you get a situation like this, which is causing real damage to the company.