Does mastodon.social block AI crawlers?
Blocks AI training, allows AI answers
mastodon.social blocks at least one AI training crawler but still lets AI answer engines read its pages.
Checked from mastodon.social/robots.txt. Robots rules change; the live file is the source of truth.
- AI crawlers blocked
- 1 of 12
- AI bots named in robots.txt
- 1
- llms.txt
- Not found
- Popularity
- Tranco top 5,000 (#2,837)
Can AI assistants cite mastodon.social?
- ChatGPT search: its search crawlers may read the site
- Claude: its search crawlers may read the site
- Perplexity: its search crawlers may read the site
mastodon.social opts out of AI training by OpenAI. Training crawlers and answer crawlers are separate: blocking training doesn't by itself remove a site from AI answers.
AI crawler access, bot by bot
| Crawler | Used for | Status on mastodon.social |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBotOpenAI | AI training | Blocked |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| Claude-UserAnthropic | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| Google-ExtendedGoogle | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| Applebot-ExtendedApple | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| CCBotCommon Crawl | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| BytespiderByteDance | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| Meta-ExternalAgentMeta | AI training | Some paths restricted |
How mastodon.social compares
- 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; mastodon.social is one of them.
- 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; mastodon.social does not.
- 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; mastodon.social does not.
- Among 175 sites of similar popularity, 25% block at least one AI crawler.
The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers
User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /media_proxy/ Disallow: /interact/ Disallow: /api/v1/instance/domain_blocks
Excerpt: only groups for all user-agents (*) or named AI crawlers, up to 40 rules per group.
Sites with a similar AI policy
- realtor.com · 1 blocked
- glassdoor.com · 6 blocked
- venturebeat.com · 3 blocked
- prezi.com · 2 blocked
- aarp.org · 2 blocked
- envato.com · 1 blocked
- livescience.com · 2 blocked
- telstra.com · 2 blocked
All sites that are “blocks ai training, allows ai answers” →
Does mastodon.social block GPTBot?
Yes. As of Oct 2, 2026, mastodon.social's robots.txt disallows GPTBot, OpenAI's training crawler.
Can ChatGPT search show results from mastodon.social?
Its robots.txt doesn't block OAI-SearchBot or ChatGPT-User, so ChatGPT's search crawlers may read it. Whether pages are actually shown depends on ChatGPT.
Does mastodon.social have an llms.txt file?
We didn't find a valid llms.txt at mastodon.social/llms.txt when we checked.
Data: mastodon.social's public robots.txt and llms.txt, fetched by AskableHQ. Popularity rank from the Tranco list (ID Y83YG). Methodology.