Patreon stops asking AI bots not to scrape — and starts blocking them
Patreon has partnered with Cloudflare to actively block AI bots from scraping creator content for model training purposes. This move shifts the platform's strategy from requesting compliance via robots.txt files to enforcing technical blocks to protect creator intellectual property.
Why it matters
This reflects the growing tension between content platforms and AI developers regarding data ownership and the ethics of automated web scraping.
Patreon , the membership platform for creators, is cracking down on AI scraping its content for training purposes. On Thursday, the company shared that it’s working with internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare to directly block access to AI bots designed to train their AI models on creators’ work without permission.
The strengthened measures were necessary because AI scraping has become more sophisticated since it first put measures in place to deter AI crawlers in 2023, the company says. In addition, Patreon’s paywall has long locked much of creators’ content out of reach of crawlers. But more recently, the company introduced new discovery tools like a redesigned Home Feed and its tweet-like Quips , which could expose more content to crawlers.
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