Patreon deploys Cloudflare technology to block AI scraper bot training

This shift marks a critical transition from trust-based web standards (robots.txt) to technical gatekeeping as a defense against large-scale data ingestion. For the streaming and creator economy, it signals that proprietary content platforms can no longer rely on paywalls alone if they also utilize public discovery features for growth. By leveraging Cloudflare’s infrastructure, Patreon is setting a precedent for membership-based video and art platforms to demand explicit consent and compensation from AI firms. Expect to watch for further adoption of Cloudflare's 'Pay Per Crawl' marketplace by other B2C media platforms as a mechanism for monetizing unavoidable bot traffic.

Patreon’s escalation coincides with a broader infrastructure pivot by Cloudflare to automate content protection across the web. Per Cloudflare (July 2026), the service provider is implementing new default settings on September 15, 2026, that will automatically block ‘mixed-use’ crawlers on all ad-supported pages. This move forces major tech firms like Google, Apple, and Microsoft to separate their search indexing operations from their AI training data collection or risk being cut off from sites using Cloudflare’s security stack. These defaults will apply to all new domains and existing Free-tier accounts unless they manually opt out.

To facilitate the financial side of this transaction, Cloudflare updated its ‘Pay Per Crawl’ marketplace, recently rebranded as ‘Pay Per Use’ (July 2026), which uses the NET Dollar stablecoin for micropayments. Per media reports from earlier in the month, publishers like Condé Nast and Time are already testing models where AI bots pay between $0.01 and $0.05 per request. This creates a technical and economic friction point for AI labs that previously operated under an 'index everything' model without explicit licensing.

Simultaneously, Patreon is navigating the inherent security risks of its new 'Network' features. Per NetInfluencer (April 2026), the platform recently launched its largest product update ever, introducing short-form 'Quips' and a redesigned recommendation engine to drive discovery. While these tools assist creator growth by exposing content to non-subscribers, they also moved previously gate-kept creative assets into the public-facing areas where AI training bots are most active. This tension between reach and protection is exactly what Cloudflare’s behavioral-based bot management aims to arbitrate.