More than 300 publishers press Congress on stealth bot bill
Publishers are lobbying for a federal bill that would require stealth crawlers to identify themselves and disclose their purpose.

Publishers are lobbying for a federal bill that would require stealth crawlers to identify themselves and disclose their purpose.

News UK CTO Tom Jackson said about 20% of traffic over six months was non-human, with 6% of total traffic blocked as malicious bots.

DataDome found malicious bot traffic grew nine times faster than human traffic, while AI agents increasingly reached login and payment flows.

Cloudflare will block training and agent crawlers by default on ad-supported pages as it moves toward pay-per-use compensation.

Keeping unauthorized AI crawlers out is an increasingly difficult game. That should change what publishers spend their energy fighting for.
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Cloudflare says default AI crawler blocking is creating scarcity that pushes AI companies to license publisher content, and pay-per-use is next.

Not every bot in your logs is an enemy. The ones publishers keep shutting out are often the ones building authority in AI answers.

Companies say the collaboration enables newsletter publishers to manage AI bot traffic, improve visibility in AI-powered search tools and protect archives

Two major publishers are blocking all AI bots by default and only letting approved crawlers through.

A shadow market of data middlemen is converting publisher work into fuel for AI agents, and the legal system is doing little to stop them.
