Cloudflare Just Became an Enemy of All AI Companies

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Cloudflare just flipped the script on generative AI by telling all new customers: “No more free-for-all web scraping.” Starting now, AI bots are blocked by default unless they pay up or get explicit permission—what the company cheekily calls “Content Independence Day.” Big names like Condé Nast, Reddit and Quora are already on board, backing Cloudflare’s push to restore the old traffic-for-content bargain that AI tools have quietly trashed.

But it’s not just a hard stop. Cloudflare plans to roll out a content-value marketplace (think paying for knowledge, not just pageviews) and new protocols so crawlers have to ID themselves and play by the rules. It’s a slick move to protect indie sites from bandwidth-hogging bots, reward original creators, and maybe—just maybe—force AI outfits to start compensating the sources that fuel them.