Published July 17, 2026 at 3:21 PM
TechCrunch
Jul 18, 2026, 6:00 AM
Patreon stops asking AI bots not to scrape — and starts blocking them

Patreon is strengthening its defenses against AI scraping by working with Cloudflare to block bots that train AI models on creators’ content without permission. The move marks a shift away from relying on websites using robots.txt alone to actively block unauthorized AI training.
Canonical URL for this story: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/17/patreon-stops-asking-ai-bots-not-to-scrape-and-starts-blocking-them/