I am equally puzzled by this. Whether it's a vanity stat to grab attention or whether there's some substance to then number given CloudFlare name (or some combination of both as I suspect).
I don't see why it's AS big a scandal given what CEO stated and reading accounts from reputable news sources.
My quick take: France tells Switzerland who then compels PM to START tracking account holder(s) and prevented PM (by law from what I've read) from telling account holder. Per PM CEO this type of Swiss order could not be disputed with the way PM has disputed other claims.
To me, it's not logging of the IP; it's when did it start and from my reading they started after being compelled to do so over a period of time between compelled to and this coming to light.
To me, strong pushback (for those who feel passionate about it) should be directed to Switzerland for complying with France for what many think is not a high enough bar to compel all this tracking. Maybe they did scrutinize it and maybe they didn't.
Any meta-data saving isn't secure but sharing that after being compelled to track account holders isn't surprising.
There's a line in their agreement that says " If a request is made for encrypted message content that we do not possess the ability to decrypt, the fully encrypted message content may be turned over.".