mastodon.social: what it tells AI crawlers
On 27 October 2026, mastodon.social's robots.txt fully blocked GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and CCBot.
Last verified 2026-10-28 03:59 UTC (daily run of 2026-10-27). Proof for that day.
- Panel
- top 10k (Tranco)
- robots.txt
- ok (HTTP 200) · https://mastodon.social/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-27 · sha256f24687f6f9333a43…· view as recorded - The * group
- allows applies to every agent without its own group
Per AI bot, 2026-10-27
| User agent | Verdict | How |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| OAI-SearchBot | allows | through the * group |
| ChatGPT-User | allows | through the * group |
| ClaudeBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Claude-SearchBot | allows | through the * group |
| Claude-User | allows | through the * group |
| PerplexityBot | allows | through the * group |
| Perplexity-User | allows | through the * group |
| Googlebot | allows | through the * group |
| Google-Extended | blocks | named in its own group |
| Applebot-Extended | blocks | named in its own group |
| CCBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Bytespider | blocks | named in its own group |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | blocks | named in its own group |
| Amazonbot | allows | through the * group |
| anthropic-ai | blocks | named in its own group |
| cohere-ai | blocks | named in its own group |
| cohere-training-data-crawler | blocks | named in its own group |
| Diffbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| FacebookBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Google-CloudVertexBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| ImagesiftBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| LinerBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| omgilibot | blocks | named in its own group |
| PanguBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Scrapy | blocks | named in its own group |
| Webzio-Extended | blocks | named in its own group |
Other signals
| Publishes /llms.txt | no |
| Publishes /ai.txt | no |
| Publishes /.well-known/tdmrep.json | no |
| Reserves TDM rights (TDMRep file, header or meta) | no |
| Declares Content Signals (robots.txt or header) | no |
| Says ai-train=no in a Content Signal | no |
| Points to an RSL licence (robots.txt License line or Link header) | no |
| Answers with an x402 payment offer (lower bound: only the homepage is probed) | no |
| Answers HTTP 402 Payment Required (lower bound: only the homepage is probed) | no |
| Sends noai / noimageai directives | no |
| Refused our fetcher (403 / challenge) | no |
robots.txt versions
| From | Through | State | Version | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-27 | 2026-10-27 | ok 200 | f24687f6f933 | diff with previous |
| 2026-10-26 | 2026-10-26 | ok 200 | fba77ace66a6 |
Timeline of changes
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| 2026-10-27 | robots.txt changed |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks anthropic-ai (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks Applebot-Extended (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks Bytespider (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks CCBot (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks ClaudeBot (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks cohere-ai (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks cohere-training-data-crawler (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks Diffbot (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks FacebookBot (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks Google-CloudVertexBot (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks Google-Extended (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks ImagesiftBot (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks LinerBot (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks Meta-ExternalAgent (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks omgilibot (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks PanguBot (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks Scrapy (was allow) |
| 2026-10-27 | now blocks Webzio-Extended (was allow) |
Reconstructed history (Common Crawl)
From Common Crawl's robots.txt captures: what CCBot was served, one crawl per quarter. A separate series from the daily observations above; a 403 here means Common Crawl was refused, not this ledger.
| Crawl | Host | State | GPTBot | OAI-SearchBot | ChatGPT-User | ClaudeBot | Claude-SearchBot | Claude-User | PerplexityBot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-21 CC-MAIN-2026-39 | mastodon.social | ok view | blocks | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2025-09-15 CC-MAIN-2025-38 | mastodon.social | ok view | blocks | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2024-09-16 CC-MAIN-2024-38 | mastodon.social | ok view | blocks | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2023-10-02 CC-MAIN-2023-40 | mastodon.social | ok view | blocks | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2022-10-03 CC-MAIN-2022-40 | mastodon.social | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2021-09-27 CC-MAIN-2021-39 | mastodon.social | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2020-09-28 CC-MAIN-2020-40 | mastodon.social | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2019-09-23 CC-MAIN-2019-39 | mastodon.social | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2018-09-24 CC-MAIN-2018-39 | mastodon.social | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2017-09-25 CC-MAIN-2017-39 | mastodon.social | redirect-only | unknown | unknown | unknown | unknown | unknown | unknown | unknown |
Evidence
Every daily observation of mastodon.social is a leaf in that day's Merkle tree. Proof of the robots.txt line for 2026-10-27: audit path (JSON), day root and OpenTimestamps proof (complete (bitcoin block 973493)).
API: https://infrarabbit.com/crawlers/api/v1/policy/mastodon.social