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While you're reading this, AI bots are likely scanning your association's public website, harvesting your blog posts, event descriptions, and publicly available resources to train their models. It's happening right now, across millions of websites, as AI companies race to feed their ever-hungry algorithms with human-created content.
CloudFlare, which handles about 16% of global internet traffic, just introduced a new feature that could change everything: a simple switch to block AI content scrapers. For associations that have spent years building authoritative content libraries, this might seem like a gift. Finally, a way to stop AI companies from using your expertise without permission or payment.
But before you rush to flip that switch, there's more to consider. This decision touches on fundamental questions about how your association's content is discovered, who benefits from your expertise, and what role you want to play in an AI-powered information landscape.
The Great Content Harvest
To understand what's at stake, let's first clarify what's actually happening. AI companies have been systematically crawling the web, gathering publicly available content to train their language models. For associations, this means your:
- Industry research reports (the public summaries and abstracts)
- Blog posts and thought leadership articles
- Event descriptions and conference materials
- Public-facing educational resources
- News updates and press releases
This is all public content—the materials you've intentionally made available to anyone visiting your website. The AI bots can't access your member-exclusive content behind paywalls any more than a regular visitor could. They're not hacking into your systems or stealing proprietary information. They're simply reading what you've put out there for the world to see.
Still, it stings. These companies are building billion-dollar businesses partly on the foundation of content that associations and other publishers created. When ChatGPT or Claude answers a question about your industry, it might be drawing on insights from your publications—without sending a single visitor to your website.
The traditional web ecosystem worked on an implicit bargain: creators provided free content and were rewarded with traffic, visibility, and often ad revenue. AI threatens to break that bargain by answering users' questions directly, bypassing the original sources entirely.
CloudFlare's New Weapon
Enter CloudFlare's response to this disruption. The company has introduced a feature allowing website owners to block AI scrapers and crawlers with a single toggle. Here's how it works:
The Blocking Mechanism: CloudFlare uses machine learning models and traffic analysis to detect bots, even those attempting to disguise themselves. Each request gets assigned a bot score to distinguish between legitimate users and automated scraping attempts. When AI crawlers are detected, they can be blocked from accessing your content.
The Innovation: Beyond simple blocking, CloudFlare is piloting something more intriguing—a pay-per-crawl system. This would allow associations to charge AI companies micro-fees each time their bots scrape content. Imagine turning those uninvited visitors into a revenue stream. Major publishers like Time and The Atlantic are already participating in the private beta.
The Default Question: Here's what you need to know: As of July 2025, CloudFlare automatically blocks AI crawlers for any NEW domains added to their service. If your association just launched a new website or recently moved to CloudFlare, AI blocking is already turned on by default. However, if you've been using CloudFlare for a while (before this policy change), the blocking is NOT automatic—you'd need to manually enable it in your dashboard. Many associations use CloudFlare without realizing it through their hosting providers, making this an urgent item to check.
Why Blocking Might Backfire
The instinct to block might be strong, but consider the potential unintended consequences:
You Might Break More Than You Fix: AI scrapers aren't the only bots crawling your site. Search engines like Google and Bing use crawlers too. So do legitimate services you might depend on—newsletter aggregation tools, research databases, monitoring services. CloudFlare's system tries to differentiate between "good" and "bad" bots, but no system is perfect. Block too aggressively, and you might find your search rankings plummeting or your own tools failing.
The Friction Factor: Your members are already using AI tools. They're asking ChatGPT questions, using Claude for research, and integrating AI into their daily workflows. If these tools can't access your public content, they can't reference it, cite it, or direct users to your website. You might be cutting yourself off from a growing discovery channel.
The Invisibility Risk: In a world where AI increasingly mediates how people find information, being excluded from AI training data might mean being excluded from the conversation entirely. Consider that your members are already relying on AI tools for research and decision-making. If these tools can't access or understand your industry's authoritative content, where will they get their information instead?
Weighing Your Options
Rather than a binary choice between blocking everything or nothing, consider these factors:
Content Strategy Evaluation: Take inventory of what's actually at stake. How much of your value proposition relies on public content versus member-exclusive materials? If most of your value is already behind a paywall, the risk of AI scraping might be minimal. But if thought leadership and industry influence are core to your mission, visibility might matter more than protection.
Revenue Potential: CloudFlare's pay-per-crawl system opens an intriguing possibility. Could AI companies paying for access to your content become a new non-dues revenue line? It's speculative for now, but worth monitoring as the system develops.
Technical Considerations: The granularity of control matters. Can you whitelist specific crawlers while blocking others? Can you allow search engines while blocking AI trainers? The more nuanced your control, the better you can balance protection with discoverability.
Member Expectations: What do your members actually want? Are they concerned about AI using association content, or are they more worried about having access to AI tools that understand your industry? Their perspective should weigh heavily in your decision.
Fighting AI is like trying to stop a tornado—you can't. The question isn't whether AI will transform how information is discovered and consumed. It will. The real question is whether your association wants to influence that transformation or be absent from it. The most successful organizations won't be those trying to prevent the change, but those learning to harness its energy for their mission.
A Practical Framework for Decision-Making
Before making any moves, here's a structured approach to evaluate your options:
Step 1: Audit Your Current State
- Check if you're using CloudFlare (look at your DNS settings or ask your web team)
- If you've been using CloudFlare since before July 2025, AI blocking is NOT automatic—log into your dashboard and check the Security or Bots section
- If you recently added your domain to CloudFlare, AI blocking is likely already ON by default
- Test your site with various AI tools to see if they can currently access your content
Step 2: Map Your Crawler Ecosystem
- List all the legitimate services that need to crawl your site
- Include search engines, monitoring tools, your own services
- Identify which crawlers provide value and which don't
Step 3: Evaluate Your Content Mix
- Categorize your public content by strategic value
- Assess how much traffic comes from search versus direct visits
- Consider how AI citations might affect your visibility
Step 4: Consider the Alternatives
- Instead of blocking, could you optimize for AI discovery?
- Would pay-per-crawl make financial sense for your organization?
- How might you create AI-friendly structured data?
Step 5: Make an Informed Choice
- If blocking, ensure you can whitelist essential services
- If staying open, consider how to maximize the benefit
- Either way, plan to revisit the decision quarterly as the landscape evolves
Your Next Move
The AI scraping dilemma isn't going away. If anything, it will intensify as AI models become more sophisticated and hungry for quality training data. Here are three immediate actions every association should take:
1. Check Your Settings Today: If you use CloudFlare, log into your dashboard and check the "Block AI Bots" setting in the Security section. Remember: If you're a new CloudFlare user, blocking is likely already ON. If you've been using it for years, it's probably OFF unless you manually enabled it.
2. Test Your Visibility: Use various AI tools to search for your association and its content. What do they know about you? What do they get wrong? This baseline will help you understand what's at stake.
3. Start the Conversation: This isn't a decision for IT alone. Bring together leadership, content strategists, and member services to discuss your approach. The choice you make will affect everything from SEO to member value.
The real question isn't whether to block or not to block. It's whether you're making a thoughtful, strategic decision based on your association's unique mission and circumstances—or simply reacting out of fear. In a world where AI is rapidly reshaping how people discover and consume information, that distinction might make all the difference.
