I understand what you're saying but it feels wrong to lump Cloudflare in with Google and Amazon. Clouflare, thus far anyway, has been mostly a force of good for the internet.
I am super impressed with Arch on my home servers. People seem to think "rolling" means "unstable" but the only issues I've had were due to some weird hardware incompatibility with my motherboard. Once I replaced the mobo my system has been rock solid AND reasonably up-to-date (I do use LTS kernel).
If we always assumed the worst no one would buy/accomplish anything. This is not a realistic way to live. The best we can expect to do is making the best decision with the information we have at hand at the time. Of course a healthy dose of scepticism isn't a bad thing either as long as it doesn't get in the way of living a relatively normal life.
So this value should only be used as a horizontal comparison metric (i.e. one car to another) and a rough estimate of overall range, just like listed MPG has always been.
I've been using Linode for a decade (or more) now without any issues. I'd encourage you to contact their support about this issue. Assuming you're on the up-and-up this sounds like a big and in sure they'd be happy to help.
If you decide not to go with Linode though I think Digital Ocean is a good alternative.
I understand what you're saying but it feels wrong to lump Cloudflare in with Google and Amazon. Clouflare, thus far anyway, has been mostly a force of good for the internet.