Patreon Partners with Cloudflare to Block AI Crawlers From Scraping Creator Content
Patreon has announced a new partnership with Cloudflare to automatically block AI web crawlers from accessing and scraping creator content without permission. The platform's CEO, Jack Conte, emphasized the company's stance with a direct statement: "Creators deserve credit, compensation, and consent. If that's not on the table, the crawlers can stay the fuck off Patreon."
The partnership leverages Cloudflare's existing bot detection and management infrastructure to identify and block known AI training crawlers at the network level. This means that when an AI company or scraper attempts to access Patreon content to collect data for model training, the request will be blocked before it reaches the platform's servers.
The move comes as creators across multiple platforms have raised concerns about their work being used to train AI models without compensation or consent. Major AI companies have faced criticism and legal challenges over their data collection practices, with some publishers and platforms choosing to block AI crawlers entirely.
Patreon's approach differs from some platforms by making blocking the default rather than requiring creators to opt-in to protection measures. This positions the platform as a stronger advocate for creator rights in the emerging landscape of AI-generated content.