Users presumably did not pay 8chan

8chan was presumably paying cloudflare

8chan was presumably paying bitmitigate

bitmitigate was presumably paying voxility

The only part of hosting controversial content for free was the user -> 8chan relationship, which they very explicitly did for free.

Everything else was not, and if money was the problem, I don't think sudden and arbitrary cutoff was the natural result. (marking up the price seems to me the reasonable response, which would have naturally gone up the chain, perhaps to the point of 8chan charging its users [or heavier advertising]).

But this wasn't a business decision, so obviously it wouldn't be a business outcome.