PATREON
The honour system failed spectacularly
Patreon is using Cloudflare technology to stop AI companies from scraping creators’ work for training without permission.
The platform previously relied on robots.txt files, which tell automated bots how they are allowed to use a website.
The problem is that these instructions are voluntary, and some AI crawlers appear to have ignored them.
Patreon is now using Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control tools to actively block bots that collect content for AI training.
During testing, attempts from individual crawlers reportedly dropped from thousands per week to zero.
In brief:
AI training bots will now be actively blocked.
Search crawlers that send users back to Patreon can still operate.
Patreon says creators should have more control over how their work is used.
Robots.txt was decorative
Bots that index pages for search and help users find Patreon content will still be allowed.
The stricter rules mainly target crawlers that copy creators’ work to train AI models.
Patreon said creators should be able to grow their audience without automatically giving AI companies permission to use their content.
AI crawlers treated robots.txt like terms and conditions, only with considerably more audacity.- MG