Patreon won't allow AI bots to scrape content anymore
What's the story
Patreon, a popular platform for creators, is taking strong action against artificial intelligence (AI) bots scraping its content for training purposes. The company has announced a partnership with internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare to directly block access to AI bots. These bots are often used to train their AI models on creators' work without any permission.
Evolution
Evolution of AI scraping
Patreon says the need for these enhanced measures comes from the evolution of AI scraping since it first implemented deterrents in 2023.
The platform's paywall has long kept much of creators' content out of crawlers' reach.
However, with new discovery tools like a revamped Home Feed and tweet-like Quips, more content could now be exposed to crawlers.
Restriction
Cloudflare's tools for web publishers
To tackle the issue of AI scraping, Cloudflare now provides tools for website publishers to restrict AI bots.
These include a marketplace that lets websites charge AI bots for scraping, called Pay Per Crawl.
Earlier this month, the company updated its policies to block "mixed-use" crawlers (those that index and train on a website's content) by default on any pages with ads.
Collaboration
Patreon's new policies
Patreon is extending its collaboration with Cloudflare to leverage the latter's AI Crawl Control technology for updating its AI policies and enforcement tools.
The platform is not just asking AI crawlers to refrain from scraping content using robots.txt files, but is actively blocking them now.
"Consent shouldn't depend on whether a scraper chooses to behave," a blog post from Patreon read.