And god forbid you live in an authoritarian country and must use VPN to protect your freedom. Internet becomes captcha hell run by 2-3 companies.

I've had far fewer issues with my own bots that access cloudflare protected websites, than during my regular browsing with privacy respecting browsers and a VPN.

As a side note: I'm at least thankful Microsoft isn't behind web gatekeeping. Try and solve any microsoft captcha behind a VPN - its like writing a thesis, you gotta dedicate like 5 minutes, full attention.