Patreon Moves From robots.txt Requests to Network-Level Blocking of AI Training Crawlers

Patreon announced July 16, 2026 that it is using Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control to block AI training crawlers at the network layer, replacing a passive robots.txt approach in place since 2023. Weekly crawler access attempts dropped from thousands to zero in testing. Search indexing bots remain permitted. Product chief Drew Rowny said "creators deserve a meaningful say in how their work is used by AI companies."