[ycombiredd]

You just caused flashbacks of error messages from BIND of the sort "cannot have CNAME and other data", from this proximate cause, and having to explain the problem many, many times. Confusion and ambiguity of understandings have also existed since forever by people creating domain RR's (editing files) or the automated or more machined equivalents.

Related, the phrase "CNAME chains" causes vague memories of confusion surrounding the concepts of "CNAME" and casual usage of the term "alias". Without re-reading RFC1034 today, I recall that my understanding back in the day was that the "C" was for "canonical", and that the host record the CNAME itself resolved to must itself have an A record, and not be another CNAME, and I acknowledge the already discussed topic that my "must" is doing a lot of lifting there, since the RFC in question predates a normative language standard RFC itself.

So, I don't remember exactly the initial point I was trying to get at with my second paragraph; maybe there has always been some various failure modes due to varying interpretations which have only compounded with age, new blood, non-standard language being used in self-serve DNS interfaces by providers, etc which I suppose only strengthens the "ambiguity" claim. That doesn't excuse such a large critical service provider though, at all.