Policy · 1h ago
Robots.txt Choices Risk Fragmenting AI Access to the Web
Website owners are selectively blocking or allowing AI crawlers via robots.txt, creating divergent information environments. This fragmentation stems from individual licensing deals and trust decisions, not technical enforcement. The divergence is already visible in retrieval-augmented generation, where different AI systems access different live sources.
Meridian48 take
The story rightly warns that fragmentation may worsen, but it understates how quickly commercial pressures could accelerate siloing beyond what robots.txt norms can manage.
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