Patreon Now Actively Blocking AI Training Bots

Patreon is moving beyond polite requests and actively blocking AI bots that scrape creator content for model training. Working with Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control technology, the platform reduced individual crawlers' weekly access attempts from thousands to zero, revealing that scrapers had been ignoring its robots.txt instructions entirely. The crackdown comes as Patreon expanded features like its Home Feed and Quips tool, potentially exposing more content to crawlers. The company will still allow indexing bots that direct users back to the platform, but insists creators deserve control over how their work is used by AI companies.