By your argument, this could still be interpreted as Cloudflare approving Ladybird. I don't see how indie genuine browsers (i.e. not bots) are "against the ethos" of restricting the web to approved browsers only.
"Approved browser" in this context have technical restrictions on user freedom, e.g. https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/reference/cry... I'm not talking about someone at CF just adding a random browser to an approved list. More empirically speaking, a browser can't be considered approved if you can freely fork it and not revoke the approved status.
I read the article you referenced, though not very carefully due to lack of time, but I don't see anything like a list of supported browsers. They even mention Firefox as supported, which can be forked just like Ladybird.
