Patreon has partnered with Cloudflare to implement a new technology that blocks AI scraping bots, aiming to protect content creators' rights and ensure proper compensation. This feature, named Crawl Control, is already operational and selectively denies access to bots that train AI models without authorization, while allowing beneficial search engine crawlers.
According to Patreon CEO Jack Conte and SVP of Product Drew Rowny, this initiative emphasizes the importance of creator consent in the evolving digital landscape. The partnership also coincides with Cloudflare’s broader expansion into AI infrastructure, including plans to automatically block training bots on all new domains starting September 15, 2026.
In addition to the anti-scraping focus, Cloudflare introduced the NET Dollar in September 2025, a USD-backed stablecoin designed for micropayments associated with web crawling activities. This system includes a “pay-per-crawl” feature that allows website owners to monetize their content by charging for bot access, with the NET Dollar serving as the transaction medium. However, there has been no announcement from Patreon regarding direct integration with the NET Dollar.
The move by Patreon reflects a larger trend among various platforms to adopt similar protective measures against unauthorized scraping. Platforms like beehiiv have also implemented bot-blocking technologies, but the collaboration with Cloudflare provides a much more scalable solution that smaller platforms cannot replicate.
This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice.
