To a degree, sure, but is it really 'MITM' if the site you are trying to visit has chosen to add cloudflare into the middle?

You may as well say all load-balancers are MITM because you might connect to a different host on each attempt and there's a man in the middle influencing your connection.

What makes it any different if the website executed the same logic cloudflare is on their own box?

"What makes it any different if the website executed the same logic cloudflare is on their own box?"

Without Cloudflare it's highly unlikely that 20% of websites _would_ implement the same logic.

The second I see that awful Cloudflare countdown I blacklist the site and never return.

I am convinced all their metrics saying they reduce bot traffic are mistaken for the fact that they reduce all traffic by annoying users away.

Gatekeeping internet and reading every byte unencrypted. Nice business monopoly.

I wonder who might be willing to fund/pay access to every byte unencrypted.