> The internet we knew was open and not trusted , but thanks to companies like Cloudflare, now even the most benign , well meaning attempt to GET a website is met with a brick wall

I don't think it's fair to blame Cloudflare for that. That's looking at a pool of blood and not what caused it: the bots/traffic which predate LLMs. And Cloudflare is working to fix it with the PrivacyPass standard (which Apple joined).

Each website is freely opting-into it. No one was forced. Why not ask yourself why that is?