It's just dumb.
To extend the analogy, the mall also refuses to tell the other store owners who owns the shop so they can take legal action. (Cloudflare quite famously will just forward your complaints about hosting illegal services to the service themselves)
Even if you genuinely believe that, how are you confident enough that people generally share your interpretation of what constitutes help to call the statement in question "false"?
What's next, is the landscaper helping run the DDoS network because they cut the grass outside so people can access the building better?
If it is the case that Cloudflare provided services to this website with full knowledge that it was a DDoS-for-hire service, which seems likely, this would significantly increase their culpability. This may also apply to the server host, if the server host directly worked with them.
I find it difficult to believe that the ISP, electric company, or government knew of the actions that this DDoS service was taking, and how their own actions benefitted them, since these entities are so far removed from the DDoS service. But if they did have knowledge of what was happening, of course they would be culpable to some extent.
I also disagree with the implication that we have to make a black-and-white judgment of "they helped" or "they didn't help". Depending on the extent of involvement, a third-party can have varying levels of culpability in the DDoS service's actions.
That is not how I read it at all; I didn't read a strong conclusion in the article one way or the other, but if anything I would say it's "if you kicked off KiwiFarms, then why not all the DDoS services?"
But most of all, I think it's a nice example on how "being neutral" is actually quite tricky around the edges.
Is that the takeaway people have from this article? My reading wasn't that the author is advocating that Kiwi Farms should have been left up. They're asking for DDoS sites to be added to the ban list.
The "hypocrisy" that they keep bringing up is Cloudflare's claim that inaction in these instances is a neutral stance, and that in actuality Cloudflare is an active participant in helping these sites stay online.
