”And then there’s the visibility problem. If you block AI bots from your site, your content may not appear in agent-generated summaries or answers. You’re protecting your rights—but possibly disappearing from the next frontier of discovery.”
The move hinges on AI companies agreeing to a sweetheart deal, which might happen due to their incentives to block newcomers to the scene. The current content of the web they already have. Less competition may be the end result.
Talking about incentives, where are Cloudflare going with this? A hunch is that they are now in the position that they aim to become the paywall of the web. Making AI companies pay is the foot in the door, the end play is of course making users pay for content. Doubt that will happen. Maybe as a consolidation of the current flora of different ways to pay for content, and making broader subscriptions. Think Netflix style.
nialse•6mo ago
The move hinges on AI companies agreeing to a sweetheart deal, which might happen due to their incentives to block newcomers to the scene. The current content of the web they already have. Less competition may be the end result.
Talking about incentives, where are Cloudflare going with this? A hunch is that they are now in the position that they aim to become the paywall of the web. Making AI companies pay is the foot in the door, the end play is of course making users pay for content. Doubt that will happen. Maybe as a consolidation of the current flora of different ways to pay for content, and making broader subscriptions. Think Netflix style.
Keen to hear other takes.