How AI Is Disrupting Web Traffic—and How CDNs and Drupal Are Fighting Back

Alejandro Moreno López critically examines how generative AI is undermining the web’s value exchange. Referencing Dries Buytaert’s warning, the post highlights how AI crawlers extract vast amounts of content while generating little to no traffic in return. Citing a 1,500:1 crawl-to-click ratio by OpenAI, and major search traffic declines for publishers, the article underscores a worsening crisis in the web economy.

Infrastructure players, such as Cloudflare and Fastly, are stepping up. Cloudflare now blocks AI bots by default for new domains and is testing a “pay-per-crawl” licensing model. Fastly offers tooling to detect, block, or monetise bot traffic and address stealth scraping with edge-level JavaScript fingerprinting. These moves represent a shift toward content-owner empowerment.

The piece also spotlights Drupal’s AI initiative, which advocates ethical, open-source AI integration. With new governance efforts and editorial tools in development, Drupal aims to support content creators rather than replace them. The blog ultimately frames this as a pivotal moment — and one where systemic change is both urgent and possible.